Attracting cannons

As mentioned before, I'm building a Bavarian horse battery. Actually it's finished, crew and all, but not based yet, so pictures will follow later. I'm also going to paint something else before I paint the limber I prepared for this battery just to have some change in 'painting scenery'. But that's not the reason for this post.

I'd just like to show a neat little trick, well beloved of the Warhammer 40K crowd who like to experiment with various weapons for their models while still retaining WYSIWYGedness (so actually representing said weapons on the miniature). They deal with the issue of a single model possibly needing several weapons with strong neodymium magnets, magnetising the weapons and their attachment points so they can easily be switched and are yet still firmly attached during use. I did something similar for the guns and limber:






As you can see in these pictures, the gun, its base and its limber all have magnets glued to them. The magnets are various shapes and sizes because I want them to be not so noticeable. The magnet under the gun carriage is, well, under the gun carriage so is not visible in normal use and is thus the largest. The magnet on the base is small so I can hide it in the gunk and flock that gets applied to the base, and the magnet on the limber is small and round because that fit it best :). While these magnets are small they are strong enough, particularly because they are attracting each other, to keep the gun in its place whether it is unlimbered (I'll leave it loose on the base) or attached to the limber in limbered mode. In fact, the limber magnet is strong enough to drag the gun along when the limber is moved :). This way, I can have a single cannon for both limbered and unlimbered models.

The only tricky thing with this is that these magnets have, like all magnets until the LHC finds the fabled monopoles, two poles. You have to take the polarity into account when you glue the magnets down or the things repel each other, which is not what you want. The way I do this is glue the first magnet down, in this case it was the one on the carriage, then stick the second magnet to the first (it will automatically 'snick' into the correct polarity) and put a dot on the side of the second magnet that is on the bottom (i.e. away from the first). Then unstick the second magnet and glue it dot–down to the base or limber.

I get my magnets from supermagnete.be (that's note a typo—it's a German firm, hence the supermagnete), which I highly recommend for their wide assortment and prompt delivery.