Attractiveness: a magnetised (magnetized ?) dreadnought.

My brother let me have a few of his itty bitty magnets and I raided Dad's shed for some washers. My goal was to do the magnet thing without needing to drill or anything, just using the simple tools I had at my disposal (ie. glue).


So Loki, my Space Wolves Dreadnought will have magnetised arms. This is cool for a couple of reasons, namely they are interchangeable so I can try other weapon loadouts, but also they are poseable =)


I attached them one at a time, on either side of the hole using superglue. Then I found out later that they stuck well to the paint, but not at all to the resin underneath, so after some paint stripping I re-glued them, then re-painted around them.


I dropped a blob of glue (very small) and then pushed the magnet into place with some plastic sprue offcut (using metal tweezers obviously is not a good idea!)

I chose washers that were the right size to not look out of place with the metal banding that is part of the model already. I could have gone for an ever so slightly smaller washer, but on the cheap I just took the closest that Dad had!

It is important to wait overnight for the glue to really set well. Otherwise when you try to glue the second magnet it'll pull together too well! As it was I put some blu-tac in between the magnets to keep them separated while the glue set, then just pulled it off and cut away any blu-tac that had been glued.


Here's the result. Two small magnets on either side of the arm lets me pivot them around. They're strong enough to stay where I swivel them, so I now have removable, poseable arms =)


You can also see that I've done some highlighting on the edges. I'm not super happy with it, but it doesn't look too bad. I've never really done highlighting well, and certainly not on this scale. From a distance it looks pretty good. Not super bold like some are, but enough to pick out the edges well.

I haven't had tons of time due to some uni assignments and a wife and baby with colds. To fix the back where the pipes went into the main chassis (it wasn't really smoothly done) I put the loincloth on the back. (I'd already decided to do the parchment name on the front, so had this bit spare.)

Of course, this wasn't particularly smooth either, and I still wanted to cover up those skulls so...

There he is with his old pre-dreadnought days axe. It's from a warhammer fantasy dwarf set that I've had forever (never played the game, just like the dwarves). This is my first attempt at shading a weapon. I coated it in chainmail, then edge highlighted with mithril. Then I put on successive layers of badab black. On the top edge working from right to left so that it's darker on the right. Underneath that in a sort of crescent I worked the wash in the opposite direction. The bottom section is just the reverse of the top. After that I used a fairly heavy blue wash to add a bit of colour, then re-touched up some of the metal.


Next I got some greenstuff, a really small amount, then rolled it into a snake, flattened it, left it overnight, then cut a long thin strip. This was for the strap that holds the axe in place. I glued a loop into the bottom part of the strip, slid it onto the axe, then glued the axe over the skulls and rough bits of the fur. Then I glued the top of the strap to the top of the dreadnought.


The little metal bolt holding it in place is actually just a tiny trim off a paper clip. The top end is smooth, the bottom is sharp from the clippers. I whacked it gently into place with the edge of my needle nose pliers then painted the strap dark flesh -> scorched brown -> bestial brown -> devlan mud wash. The paper clip was black, chainmail, badab wash, re-highlight chainmail.


So there you go, he's essentially done now except for gluing on the banner and then him onto the base (which may be challenging) except...

Those big flat spaces need some more freehand work on them =) I'm leaning towards celtic sort of symbols like on my dwarven shields. 


The claws also need some work, probably blue/white lightning or something, but I've been putting that off until I have a good long chunk of time.


Once on the base I thought I might do some reflection of the lava below, like I did on the rocks, but not sure how that'll work on the mini.


I'll try to make some time for these final bits at some stage, but I doubt it'll be any time soon.