Magnetizing A Razorback: The Definitive How To

With the 5th edition vehicle rules making the Space Marine Predator less than practical, what is a Space Marine player to do? Take Razorbacks, that's what! I grabbed two of them for my Genesis Space Marine chapter. I intend to use these not only as Razorback, but also as Rhino's as the kit will easily allow for both. The Razorback, like most every other vehicle gives you the bitz for various weapons load outs and that of course is where the magnets come in.

I wanted to magnetize the Razorback as easily as I could without having to purchase additional bitz. So I ended up doing most of the work right the turret mount. 

I started by clipping off and smoothing out the pegs that the weapons normally mount to.

I then took two 1/8" diameter by 1/32" thick magnets and glued one to each side of the mount where the pegs had been.

Using the same sized magnets I was able to simply press them into the holes on the weapons where the pegs would have gone. It was quite convenient that the sizes matched up so perfectly.

A test fit to make sure everything lines up well and the magnets would in fact hold when positioning the guns. 

Next I had to solve the issue of the armoured carapace that sits on top of the guns. I went ahead and magnetized it also. The magnets didn't need to be all that strong since the carapace just sits on top so I ended up using some smaller 1/16" diameter by 1/32" thick magnet. I simply used my pin vice with a 1/16" bit to make a hole in the bottom of the carapace and pressed in the magnet.

Subsequently I needed to give the armour carapace something to attach itself to. As you can see in this picture, using the same magnets and technique I placed two more small magnets into each of the guns. I also needed to trim off the little rail on each gun that the carapace normally fits onto.

And here is the final results. To switch out weapons I simply pop off the armour carapace remove each gun, snap in the new gun and replace the carapace.

An important note... Make sure to check you magnet polarities before committing to glue or pressing it into place. Thanks for stopping by and reading, I hope this post helps anyone who's trying to mag their Razorback.  :)

What's On The Painting Table?

A few days ago bigred over at Bell of Lost Souls asked readers "What's on your painting table?" Well, bigred (if you happen to read my blog) here's the current state of my painting table. I just finished up painting Mechrite Red on my Landspeeder and got out the Devlan Mud to give a good wash, but decided to call it a night.  I had originally given myself a deadline of March 18th to have this thing finished, but I got distracted with making some scenery for my RoBG.

Some of my other hobby progress is in the picture below. I managed to put together most of the fist Imperial Sector box. There was a ton of stuff in that box. Far more than I expected. Eventually I'm going to put the buildings on some bases and make them more cinematic and of course paint them, but for the time being it's back to Genesis Space Marines.

Realm of Battle Gameboard - Final!

Cue the music from Rocky and crack open the beers, my RoBG is complete. In this final stage I finished up all of the skull pits by doing an overbrush of Bleached Bone followed by a Badab Black wash and lastly a very light dry brushing of Skull White. I then laid down some of the scorched static grass from the GW scenery pack in small patches to try and compliment some of the existing terrain features.

Now all the board is lacking is some scenery; which will be remedied soon enough as you can see in the picture below as well as see what projects are to come.

Death Guard DP Take 2

More work on the DP! Started work on the scythe, but nothing really to brag about. Comments/suggestions welcome of course.

~Grendel

Death Guard Daemon Prince WIP

It's been a while since my last post, but I have been busy with my army. I have a squad of plague marines just about ready to go, and alot of other mini's primed and ready for the brush. In the middle of all this, I got sidetracked a bit with this bad boy.

I have no problem with GW's nurgle prince. I think it looks really awesome, but can't really do much with it. Throw wings on it....meh. I wanted to make my own just for the sake of having something unique. The new forgeworld model, in my opinion, lacks in alot of areas. So I started this conversion up, consisting so far of a older greater demon box (with the wide mouth head), the balrog box, and some bits from the chaos vehicle sprue.

In the end, this model is going to have two weapons. The plague sword is already on, but I really want this guy to have a manreaper, too. I will definitely post the finished work when it's done, and comments/suggestions are always welcomed. Thanks!

~Grendel

New and Improved Roster Sheet

- Download the New Army Roster -

OK everyone, I have a real treat for you today. I decided to give the old Army Roster a face lift along with some much needed improvements. In this revision I added a place for walkers, increased the space for 'weapon type' and removed the 'points' column under weapons. I also made it an editable PDF Form so you can type in all your stuff before you print it out. I did have to make some sacrifices to fit in the new walker section, but I don't think it's anything that will be missed... mainly I took out some weapons lines. Please feel free to give me suggestions on improving it. Enjoy!

Update: The issue of not being able to save the file using Adobe Reader has been resolved.

- See and get other roster sheets here -

Happy Fun Time With Magnets

Happy fun time dealing a fist full of death that is... and doing it with options makes it just that much better. So here's my latest project - a Landspeeder for my Genesis chapter of Spacemarines. I couldn't decide if I wanted the Heavy Bolter or the Multimelta. So I decided on both and to try my hand at using magnets.

I used 1/16" diameter by 1/32" thick Neodymium magnets. Better known as 'rare earth magnets' even though they're anything but rare. I bought mine from a local PA company K&J Magnets. Just $6.00 landed me 100+ of these things.

It didn't take much to do really. I used my pin vise with a 1/16" bit to drill a small hole and pressed the pin in. Surprisingly it didn't need glue as the magnet was pretty snug despite the magnet and hole having the same diameter. One thing I learned the hard way... be sure the magnet polarities match up before pressing it in.

Realm of Battle Gameboard - Stage Three

I'm heading down the home stretch getting ready to cross the finish line.

In this stage I drybrushed Fortress Grey onto all of the rocks and cliffs, but only on the edges and on the top, leaving the edge up against the brown darker. Using the 2" brush from the scenery painting pack I proceeded to drybrush the entire table less the rocks and cliffs Ochre until my back hurt. Seriously! Once finished I went back with a large flat dry brush and did some further highlighting around the rocky areas and skull pits. I then overbrushed Bleached Bone on all of the skulls and followed it up with a wash of Badab Black.

What's left? Well... I'm going to give the skull pits one last highlight and then lay down some patches of the scorched static grass from the scenery painting pack. The excitement is killing me... and so is my back so I'm gonna go lay down. Cheers!