Magnetizing Marine Weapons

First I want to apologize for the pics here. I took them over a month ago on the phone and didn't check the image quality. Things are a bit out of focus, but I don't have pictures any better than this.

For my first squad of Tacticals, I didn't really know what to assemble. Space Marines have way more options than Necrons. So magnetizing is an obvious way to go, however, while magnetizing Necrons I found that there's a limit to how much magnetization makes sense. Specifically, once there's a single way to grab the model, you've gone too far. If you grab the model wrong and his limbs start popping off, that's too much.

I eventually decided to give my Sergeant a combi-weapon (magnetized to all 4 options), and to magnetize one guy with all special weapons (again, all 4). I didn't include a Heavy weapon because I'm thinking I'd like my squads to move and shoot, and grav is a bit cheesy. I didn't have a grav gun anyway, and I can always one-off a Marine with a grav gun if I really want to spend some points on not being fun to play with.

So, here's how I magnetized the Sergeant's weapon:

Pretty straightforward and it works fine. I used 2mm x 1mm round magnets. The top sides of the weapon cannot slide sideways to the left hand side of the weapon, just the right; so I put the magnets at a slight offset to make the magnets pull the top edge in such a way to keep it stable.

The Special Weapons guy was a bit more work. Same magnets, but this time one pair for each arm:

Turns out that the 1mm thick magnet can fit in their palm without breaching the other side of the hand. The weapon rests very firm when put in, enough to lift the model by the weapon.

So much for now. I'm getting close to finishing the first ten, really looking forward to taking some nice pics and starting to work on a Rhino.

Thanks!