Learn how to magnetize your miniatures for storage, painting, transportation, and more with this excellent tutorial from Goobertown Hobbies!
Goobertown Hobbies is a great content creator with interesting takes on the hobby. Whether it’s a collaboration with other YouTubers or a challenge for himself, he covers a broad range of topics. Since he has so much great content, why not check out what else he has done?
This week he is looking at how to magnetize your miniatures, to make transportation, storage, and painting even easier! He does this on basically every model; let’s see how to do it.
How to Magnetize Miniatures For Storage, Painting, & More!
There are so many things you can do by adding magnets to minis! Most times, people think about just using it to have all the bit options, but you can do things like magnetize for carrying purposes, painting handles, primer contraptions, and a lot more.
Magnetizing Your Bases
He magnetizes every mini he has on the base using rare-earth neodymium magnets. You can pick them up from various retailers, but lately, he has been grabbing them off eBay.
We get all our magnets for hobbying from The Magnet Baron. Use coupon code Spikey10off to get 10% off your next order with them!
There is a common rule of thumb for magnets, too small, and they won’t hold; too big, and they won’t fit on the bases, so here are the standard sizes he uses:
- 25mm base- 6mm x 1.5mm
- 32mm base- 6mm x 4mm x 2mm
- Bigger bases- 10mm x 2mm
If you need something stronger, you can always use more than one.
The next thing to consider is how thick the metal you are magnetizing to is. Something thicker will be stronger, but the thinner piece holds just fine, even for his paint handles. Flexible magnetic sheets are a little dicey, as they generally don’t hold very well unless you have enough surface area.
Securing Your Magnets
The further away your base is from the metal, the less attraction it will have, so here are some strategies to attach your magnets. First, you can put down some Milliput on the bottom of the base, like in the picture above, to bring the magnet right to the bottom of your base.
Regular glue doesn’t work great, so instead, he uses a two-part epoxy from Locktite. Just be sure to keep the polarities the same! One thing that can help is scratching up the bottom of your bases with something like a Dremmel too.
Also, one more important note, you want to magnetize the bases before you put the minis on! that way you dont Damage the figure or paint job.
Magnetize Paint Handles for Miniatures
He starts with a wooden dowel and cuts it into 3″ long pieces and sands off the rough edges. Next, he drills a hole in the top and bottom of the handles. He then puts magnets of opposite polarities into each hole so that he can hold on to any mini, no matter the polarity.
You can even build contraptions like this to spray all your models at once, so be creative and find solutions for what you need!
Magnet Trays
Next, he likes to use cake pans for his minis, as the bottoms are metal, and most come with plastic tops to keep your models safe. Just be sure to take a magnet with you to the store, as some trays are made of aluminum and will not work! You will need something ferrus to hold the attraction of the magnet!
You can also build your own by taking whatever plastic containers you like and adding a strip of duct steel to the bottom, and they will just hold the models easily! Again, make sure you’re buying something that will work!
Strike Plate
He just started using these, and they were cheap! He got 250 from Total Element, which works great for 32mm bases. They have a solid hold for the magnetic painting handles and work great for bases without much room underneath.
He’s been using them for his conquest models, which work perfectly with the movement trays. He adds a magnetic strip to the tray (as seen above), and the models stick perfectly.
Final Thoughts
Don’t keep magnets near certain items, like credit cards, electronics, or phones! As strong magnets can cause some serious issues. Overall, he thinks this is better than foam, as it doesn’t really matter what size they are.
One last thing to think about, if your magnets are strong, they can make models stick to one another!
If you are curious about the whole video with more details, don’t forget to watch the full video above! Also, subscribe to Goobertown Hobbies if you enjoy his content!
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We get all our magnets for hobbying from The Magnet Baron. Use coupon code Spikey10off to get 10% off your next order with them!
How do you prefer to magnetize your miniatures?
About the Author: Travis Pasch
Travis Pasch
Job Title: Head Writer & Editor
Socials: @paschbass
About Travis Pasch: Travis has been a Warhammer 40k hobbyist since the 1990s, playing the game since Third Edition. Through extensive traveling, he’s seen a lot of the miniatures hobby from across the world, giving him a unique perspective on the latest gaming topics and trends.
Travis’s brother even owns a commission painting studio, where he’s picked up a lot of good advice and techniques for painting Warhammer and tabletop miniatures over the years, as well. Travis joined the Spikey Bits team in 2019 and has been the lead writer since 2020.
Currently, he’s working on converting all his 40k Adeptus Mechanicus models and becoming a true tech enjoyer, complete with both sad and happy robot noises!
