How to magnetise an Eldar Wraithknight

Nick speaking,

Welcome to this tutorial on how to magnetise an Eldar Wraithknight with all weapon options. I have also made my Wraithknight detachable at the waist for storage purposes. I hope it is useful to you, just leave a comment if you have any questions...

First, remove all the pieces and clean up the mold lines, you can follow the instructions to build and glue the majority of the mini before having to look at magnetising. I left the fins off the back of my mini to make it easier to paint, but you can glue them if you want to. You will also notice that I have exchanged the Ghostglaive for a converted Bat'leth weapon, but the tutorial still stands for the sword supplied...

Although there is no need to magnetise the head, I like to do mine. I always find the model can take on totally different poses just my rotating the head around, so that is where I will start. First, glue on an old piece of plastic to the underside section of the neck, I used an old cut up base for mine. Then turn it over and glue a magnet onto the inside of the plastic piece and onto the bottom of the neck. I am using 3mm x 0.5mm magnets for this...

Now to the main section, the arms. First shave off some plastic on the shoulder joint with your hobby knife to give you a nice flat section to glue a magnet too. I did mine down until I had a small hole for me to put in some green stuff as well as super glue for a nice strong bond. I then put some green stuff into the joint on the arm itself and glued a magnet onto that at an angle to give me a nice pose. I am using some 5mm x 1mm magnets here that I got from eBay a while ago...

My magnets magnetised fine, but the arms are pretty heavy, and I found that the arm slipped down when in place. If you can get bigger and stronger magnets then I used, you may not need the next section, failing that, this is how I solved the problem. First, I drilled a hole next to the magnet on the body and super glued a paper clip in it as a pin. Then I drilled a hole next to the magnet in the arm joint. This stopped the arm from slipping down with no problems at all...

Once I had that done, I just added a couple more holes next to the magnet in the arm joint, to give me a few more options for when it came to posing the mini. I then did the same for all four arms. It is really great that the kit comes with all the arm options, with just the one arm option needing to be magnetised between the Wraithcannon and Suncannon, which we will look at next...

First are the two pieces at the back of the gun, which as you can see from the picture below, are not too different. So much so, that in the end, I decided to just glue one of them on instead of magnetising the two. I went for the Wraithcannon piece, so that when I have both Wraithcannon arms on, they will look the same.

On a side note, I also glued in place the Suncannon finder scope as well, as I think it looks cool with both weapon options anyway. Talking about the two guns, the kit is so good that both the Sun and Wraithcannon's fit into the gun body so well, that there is no need to magnetise them either, just push them into place and switch them as needed. Then it was just a case of magnetising the two extra gun sections as below, I used some 2mm x 1mm magnets and a 2mm drill piece for this...

Next is the shoulder mounted guns, and once again, the kit is so good, that the three different gun options just push into place, without having to magnetise them...

Just drill a 2mm hole into the gun fittings on the body, be careful here, as the curved plastic can be a bit slippy when you drill. Once you have your holes, just super glue your 2x1mm magnets in the holes. I actually used two magnets in mine to make the fitting stronger. I also filled in the holes with 'green stuff' to hide the magnets. I will file these down when they are dry for a nice smooth finish. Then I used some of the 3x0.5mm magnets underneath the gun fittings, and that's that bit done...

Now to the body and legs, and once again this is a big old section to magnetise, so I had to use the magnet and pin method as on the arm joints. I drilled the holes so that the body would be twisted when in place, and made the two pins different lengths so that it is easier to locate the holes when it comes to putting it together...

That's it, all done...

Here is a video I made with the process as well...