Imperial Knight: Magnetising (I)

As I showed in a previous post I got a Knight a while ago, so of course as soon as I had time, after finishing the skavens, I started to assemble it.

I wanted to make sure I have all possible combinations available, so I would need to use a lot of magnets.
I have to say that probably the Imperial Knight is the best kit from Games Workshop I have ever prepared, most of the parts would not even need glue, they are just designed so that they fit perfectly.

Before I started to work on it, I browsed the web looking for information on how people have configured their Knights so that they can change the weapon combinations.
I found out lots of information, but these two were the best in terms of clear pictures and instructions:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nxudVNVbUU
• http://www.theindependentcharacters.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6858

After gathering all info, the only remaining part was to start preparing it. It took me about 4-6 hours to prepare all pieces, and add green stuff and magnets.

Here is an explanation of what I did, in case somebody finds it useful.

First of all, an overview of all the pieces of the Knight.

I have not glued the shoulders in place to the upper body, so that I can paint them easily, but those would not have a magnet in the end, they will just be glued.

I found out a common problem with the Knights that are not glued together, that is, that the union of the upper body and the legs is quite weak and they tend to move a lot. So I went ahead and created a plasticard structure inside the body to ensure that the connection is firm and snaps in place, without any flexibility.

There is one magnet in the legs, and another one in the upper body, just on the crossing of those two pieces of plasticard, you can see the detail in the pictures.

You can see the magnet inside the body from here

 The legs were the simplest part, I just glued all components and put a magnet on top. In order to make the union more secure, I put a big plasticard stick so that it fits into the hole of the upper body.

Legs and body attached

I also put magnets on the carapace so that I can decide if it will have any weapon on top.
In total I used five magnets in this part, as the rocket launcher has two kinds of rockets, shown on the right side of the picture.

The arms are the trickiest part of the whole Knight.
After watching many videos, I decided to go for sawing the upper part, drilling a hole big enough for the magnet and making sure any arm combination could fit in both magnets. Make sure you get the polarity correct.

For the arms I just filled with greenstuff the upper part and stuck a magnet on top.
There are four arms and five combinations. That means that you have three arms that are always stuck in same combination, which is the Ratling, the Power fist and the chain sword, that are the easy ones.

Example of arms attached

Then you have the difficult part, which is ensuring a single arm will work for the Battle Cannon and for the Thermal Cannon.

This is how I did it.

Make sure you put the magnet on top to attach the arm as the rest of the arms, then try out all possible combinations until you find out good spots for attaching magnets in all parts.
You would need to cut the cable of one of the parts of the Thermal Cannon, as it must go inside of the structure, and you would not be able to remove it once the structure is in place. Make sure you try out all parts and put magnets in all of those before gluing them together.

All parts that would need a magnet in order to make the Battle or the Thermal Cannon.

You can see on the left the magnet for the left side barrel for the Battle Cannon and on the right, inside there is a part for Thermal Cannon, with another magnet.

 Then you attach a magnet for both the Battle Cannon and the Thermal. As they both come with a plastic piece inside that you are supposed to remove, I recommend not removing it and reusing it for your magnet.

 Example of Battle Cannon attached.

Example of Thermal attached. As you can see it does not fit 100% fine, so I need to tweak a bit the position of the magnet on the Thermal side.

The last thing I magnetized was the multi melta and the heavy stubber that go on the side of the head, that is a pretty straight forward job, since you just need to cut the top and place a magnet on both sides.

Example of a fully magnetized Knight, although some parts are missing as they are not glued yet for easier painting.

This is the base, after adding some texture to it. The base will also be magnetized, along with the feet, so that I can store it easily.