I had a wild thought inspired by discussions of storage solutions for our many bases of infantry but couldn't (in admittedly, a rather short search) find any subjects dealing with my idea specifically. Hence this.

Has anyone tried mounting one or two small rare earth (Nd) magnets into the plinth holes of infantry bases with the magnetic adhesion downwards, through the base, with the intent of storage on metal surfaces/tins/boxes? I'm considering the idea (as it might just be easier than hand-cutting hundreds of shapes flush with bases) and wondered if it sounded feasible.

I'm very interested to hear if it's a totally idiotic idea and if someone already tried it, or if anyone knows of a much simpler, easier solution to magnetise bases for storage.

So pretty much everyone in my club store their armies in metal tool boxes with magnets on the bases, it's a great cheap way to store and transport armies safely.

For infantry i find it's best to use Self Adhesive Magnet Sheet A4 and to cut them out to the size of your stands.
I wouldn't use rare earth magnets on anything except larger war engines/titans otherwise your infantry may just "flip" and stick together when too close on the playing field.

That'd be a whole new take on the term, Flying Power Fist!

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Having never used rare earth magnets in anything, this was not something I had considered. This is why I'm glad I can ask first, before being crazy enough to try it!

I'm interested in peoples experiences with this too as I intend to magnetise all my armies (considering 90% of my collection only blu-tacked together this is going to be a massive undertaking). I bought some flexible magnetic sheet and flexible steel sheet years ago but have never used them.

This year I plan to save up and buy a van and heavily convert it to in a nice live in van (I'm never going to be able to afford a conventional mortgage and I'm tired of paying a significant portion of my income on rent) and all my models and scenery will need to be magnetised on shelves to stop them going all over the place when driven around.

To avoid the risk of models bases magnetising to each other (or other passing passing metal things e.g. cutlery, tape measure ends, etc) would it not be safer to have some flat metal in the models bases and the magnetic sheet glued to the storage shelves/trays?

My Tau have magnetic (ie metal rubber) bases as the bottom layer, and these stick well to magnetised sheet to achieve the storage aspect. But also some models have rare earth magnets on their underside to stick them to the bases instead of glue. I do this so characters can be swapped out (actually in practice this would be far more useful for marines or something but it was too cool not to try). I think the details are on my thread "kyrt paints something".

I am skeptical about rare earth magnets working through a non magnetic base to a metal case underneath. Strong as rare earth magnets are, they need to be thin or else you will need a ridiculously deep base. I think mine are 6x0.5mm which is perfect strength for removable characters that don't fall out but I don't think would be enough to attract and stick through a base to a surface underneath.

They are cheap though so it will take you all of 10 minutes to find out.

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I doubt magnets would work through existing base material. I was envisaging cutting hole or holes in the underside of the base and epoxying in steel or magnets

That sounds exceptionally time consuming, especially to do more than one magnet. The thing about magnets is the distance makes a big difference so you need to have them flush with the bottom.

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If you were to maybe cut through the base entirely and then paper over the top and glue in magnets that are the same depth as the base that could be a lot quicker. You could drill through multiple bases at a time.

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yeah Kyrt's spot on (as usual). Magaetic field strength proportional to the inverse cube of distance. Basically if you double the distance the strength drops by a product of 8! Even strong magnets need to be up close and personal

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Mmm, science.

Hiya,

Sorry I might be a bit late. I magnetize all my miniatures, I have been a bit bad and haven't posted a lot lately but I'll soon change it.

I tend to make sure two small (2mm diameter by 1mm depth cylinder) are drilled into the bases of my infantry stands. With a magnet this small all you need to do is make sure the polarity is consistent. There's literally no way miniatures have ever 'flipped' into sticking together (in my experience).

https://www.tinyworlds.co.uk/

These guys stock lots of small cylinder magnets but you can also find them on ebay. I always try to get magnets that are thicker than they are deep.

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Magnets might get fiddley, I just use adhesive magnetic strips for the bottom.



That's a .8mm Litko base with some 1/4" holes drilled into it and backed on a 20mil adhesive magnetic strip cut to size.

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That's a great way to do things Dave though I could be wrong but seems better from the get-go, no?

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I had initially thought of basing epic armies in the same way I do my 15mm 'historicals', on steel flats, but not being able to get custom cuts done in shapes and sizes I want for my various armies put me off. I have absolutely no idea why I was fixated on magnets on the bases and didn't think to put flexible steel on them instead.

That just sounds like a winner. All praise Saint Dave, Champion of Magnetism!