Magnetizing An Ork Flyer, Part One

I picked up my first Ork flyer from the Newport Hobby House on Friday, and carved out some time to assemble it the past few nights. As I've not had a chance to playtest any of the variants (Dakkajet, Blitza-Bommer, Burna-Bommer) and with 6th Edition right around the corner, I wanted to use magnets to make the model convertible between at least two configurations, preferably the Dakkajet and the Blitza. As of last night, I have the Dakkajet configuration finished.

Dakkadakkadakka!

Knowing that I wanted to use the model as a Blitza, I cemented the angled wing sections into place and built the body like the Bommer on the box. One set of supa-shootas was cemented into the gun sockets on those angled sections, but any other armaments needed to be swappable. Here's the stripped-down model:


Not so tough without your guns, are you?

The first things I magnetized were the wing guns. Those come in three pieces: the wing flap top mount, the gun barrel, and the bottom of the mount. First, I cemented the barrel into the top mount. Then, I shaved off the plastic tab from the top mount, and used a 1/8" drill bit held in my hand (it's just a little too big for my pin vice) to carve out just enough plastic where the tab was to flush fit a 1/8" x 1/16" disk magnet. On the bottom half, I used the same drill bit and flush mounted a 1/8" x 1/32" disk magnet. Both magnets were glued in place with superglue (CA, krazy glue, whatever you want to call it).

Next came the chin-mounted guns. These have a hollow underside and therefore needed to be filled in order to accept a magnet. I mixed up a little two-part epoxy putty ("green stuff") and stuck a little bit into the underside of each gun and pressed in a 1/8" x 1/16" disc magnet until it was a little recessed. Because these guns will mount to a curved surface, the magnets need to be flush with the nadir of the curve; if it's not, the gun will sit a little proud of the fuselage. Some putty sqeezed out of the spent cartridge hole while I pressed in the magnet, so I cleaned it up with a knife.

The hatch behind the pilot is only dry-fit, but it seems reasonably snug, and gravity should keep it in place on the tabletop. All told, this only took me a couple of liesurely hours. Tonight I'll try to magnetize the Boom Bombs for the Blitza configuration (see Part Two), and then it's off to be primed!