I had seen people magnetizing models before, usually to swap out different pieces on vehicles, but occasionally with smaller models as well. I ran across quite a few Crisis Suits with magnetized weaponry, however. It turns out that I'm not the only Tau that wants to retain that flexibility! While I've heard of whole arms being magnetized, that seemed like overkill. I'd glue the arms in place, and just magnetize the weaponry.

Where'd I get those tiny magnets?
I've ordered from kandjmagnetics.com before and gotten good service, but I decided to check out gaussboys.com this time. They had a slight discount on exactly the magnets I was looking for, so I went with them. They also gave me good, quick service. Based on what I saw on several Tau magnetizing tutorials, I decided that 3mmx1.5mm would be perfect for me. Based on my experience now, I probably could have gone for a smaller magnet, but 3mmx1.5mm worked well. (I chose 3mm diameter because it seemed to be the largest size that would still be able to be hidden on the arms and weapons.)

Broadside Dilemma
What about the Broadside Battlesuits? Their big Railguns and heavy armor can be very handy. But, depending on which army type I want to use, I need a variable number. That in itself isn't so bad, but that number varies between 0 and 9! That's a lot of Broadsides that would just be sitting around unused, and that translates into a lot of wasted money and time for me.

I realized that I wouldn't be using all of my Broadsides _and_ all of my Crisis Battlesuits in the same army type, so if I could overlap them and have some that could switch between Crisis and Broadside as the need arose, I'd save a good deal of money and time. (The money saved is about $75, even with the fact that I'm using XV25 Stealth Suit models rather than the more expensive XV88 Broadside Suits. The time saved by not having to paint 9 additional models: Priceless.) With the standard models, the only real difference is the backpack and the guns. Since I'm using the XV25 Stealth Suits, there isn't a backpack difference, so it's just the guns.

Since I'm using a single (cut down) Hammerhead Railgun as the twin-linked Railgun of my Broadsides, I felt that it would be too heavy for a single magnet to support. (It turns out that it's pretty close, a single magnet will hold it in place, but it needs something to support one end or the barrel will droop downward.) I decided that I'd use two of my 3mmx1.5mm magnets to support it and it worked quite well.

Since I would be using some of my models as either a Crisis Suit or a Broadside, I had to choose my modeling carefully. Crisis Suits have Jet Packs, and thus I wanted to model most of them in aerial poses. Broadsides on the other hand, can only walk, so I had to model them on the ground. I made sure that I had the right number of models with non-aerial poses and added a pair of magnets to the side of their armor near the head/shoulder region. I think that a good paint job will keep the magnets from being too obvious when they aren't in use.

While I was attaching the magnets to the models, I had an idea to make it easier to store some of the models. It occurred to me that if I could attach the flying bases (of the Crisis Battlesuits that are airborne) with magnets, I could remove them for storage, which makes the models less fragile and take up less space.

Lessons Learned
While I was working on this project, I learned a few things about working with magnets that would be useful to other people that want to use magnets. If you are planning on working with magnets, learning from my mistakes and experiences will save you a significant amount of time and disgruntled-ness.

One of the first things was something that I kind of already knew from reading articles about working with magnets: you have to be careful about the polarity of your magnets when you glue them into place. If you have the positive side out on the arm and the positive side out on the weapon, the weapon will slide away from the contact (or hover above it if you have it set vertically.) Obviously the same goes for the negative sides. Since opposites attract, you need to make sure that you'll have a positve-negative contact for this to work. One way to do this is to mark all your magnets ahead of time. While that's a lot of time and effort with these little buggers, I did use a version of this at times. When I was attaching multiple magnets at once, such as when I was setting up my potential Broadside Battlesuits to get Railgun mounts, I would figure out the polarity for the group and mark one side with a marker. As long as the marker side was out, I knew I'd have the right polarity.

Another way to do this is to glue one magnet in place, then once it has set, put another magnet on top of it, then glue that magnet directly to the weapon. This ensures that you have the correct polarity, though it can mean that you have to hold onto it for longer while you wait for the glue to set. You also have to be careful that you don't use too much glue, as you can accidentally glue the two magnets together! The final caution for this is that sometimes you will end up with different connections having different polarities. For example, I've got a Plasma Rifle that can only go on one specific Crisis Battlesuit, since it's the opposite polarity from the other Plasma Rifles (and Suits.) That's not a huge issue, it just means that I'll occasionally have to hunt around to find the right plasma gun for a given Battlesuit.

I also ran into problems with the strength of the magnets. Neodymium magnets are particularly strong, which is why they are suitable for the purpose of attaching weapons and other pieces onto models. Unfortunately, this also means they attract each other easily. I ran into a lot of problems attempting to glue the Railgun mount magnets onto the models, since they'd try to fly off and attach themselves to the magnets that were already on the arms (the gun mount magnets) or to a Railgun mount magnet I'd already placed. There are really three ways to handle this. One is to try to "mask" the magnet that is already in place, to keep the new magnet from flying onto it. This can be hard as it is difficult to find a material that will mask it without being attracted to the magnet itself. The second is to hold the magnet in place until the glue is set enough for it to stick. This can be problematic since the magnet is very strong, so the glue needs to be well-set to resist it breaking off. It can also cause problems to hold something so small while you are gluing it, as you will often find it glued to your finger better than to the model. The final method would be to apply the magnets _before_ you glue the separate parts to the model. Thus, you could glue the magnets on the arms, glue the magnets on the side of the model and _then_ glue the arms to the model. (I really wish I'd thought of this one before I'd assembled them!)

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