Diesel DM

Privateer Press’s plastic Heavy Warjack Kits come with all the pieces necessary to build one of several different heavy ‘jacks.  For Cygnar this means you can build an Ironclad, a Cyclone or a Defender.  But then you have left over parts and only one ‘jack.  Magnetizing the plastic kit allows you to swap arms and heads in and out, so while you still only get one heavy warjack at a time, you can change which ‘jack it is at any time.  For most warjacks this is a fairly straight forward process, you drill holes at each joint, insert magnets and you’re done.  The Cyclone presents a different problem, it has a large gatling gun slung under each forearm.  The problem becomes: where do you put the attaching magnets on the forearms such that they aren’t visible when the guns are not attached?  I’ve seen a couple different solutions to this problem and I’ve combined the best of both solutions into a one that works very well.

Here’s the complete Cyclone for reference:

Now here’s a closeup of where the gun attaches to the forearm:

And here’s the arm with the gun removed:

Let’s compare it to the original, unmodified arm with the plastic screw still molded in:

Not too much of a difference!  (Especially if you ignore where I apparently smeared the black line. Amazing what you noticed once you start taking macro photos of your work) So as you can see from here I have drilled out the location of the screw in the forearm and replaced it with a 1/16″x1/32″ cylinder magnet.  I then painted it silver, painted a thin black line across it and put some armor wash around it to darken the area between the magnet at the rest of the arm.  But here’s the real trick:  There’s a second magnet!  On the bottom of the forearm in line with the first magnet I drilled and placed a second magnet flush with the rest of the arm.  Here’s a picture:

As you can see I painted it blue along with the rest of the arm and being underneath it blends right in.  The above picture is so up close that it looks pretty obvious, but on the actual model it’s almost unnoticeable.  Another option would be to leave it stick out a bit and do as above: painting it silver with a black line to make it look like an additional screw.

To get these magnets positioned correctly on the gatling gun, start by drilling out the screw on the arm and gluing in the magnet.  Next drilling out the inside of the screw on the gatling gun, being very careful not to drill through as the plastic is very thin here.  Glue a magnet in here also, aligning the poles so that it attracts the arm magnet.  Now drill your second hold on the arm down toward the bottom.  It will right where the mold injection site left a mark on the arm.  Glue in the bottom magnet, making sure that the same pole is facing out as the screw magnet above, you don’t want these fighting each other.  No take a small amount of blue-tack and place it at the corresponding location on the gatling gun’s inner bottom face.  Put a drop of water on top to keep it from sticking to the arm.  Put the gatling gun on the arm so the top magnets align and you get a good close fit along the rest of the arm brace.  Press firmly so you get an imprint of the bottom magnet onto the blue-tack.  Remove the gun while keeping the blue-tack attached to the gun and not the arm.  Now drill your last hole as indicated by the imprint of the blue-tack.  Glue in the last magnet, once again ensuring the correct pole is facing out.

Repeat this same procedure for the other arm and your Cyclone is ready for action.