Magnetising Pak40's

Hi All,

Andy here with a post on magnatising models. I haven't built my Shermans yet which came with Open Fire but I really like the fact they've been supplied with magnets. It got me thinking about what else would be good to magnetise and the first thing that sprung to mind was the Pak40.

I hate seeing nicely painted models being spoiled by having bent barrels, and especially when the paint flakes off! Looking at the Pak40 model I saw this as being particularly vulnerable as the barrel for the gun protrudes a fair way over the front of the base and is particularly thin on the plastic version.

I started looking at how to fit magnets to the model and initially though about keeping the gun whole but then attaching it to the base with magnets. I quickly realised this wasn't practical and settled upon magnetising the gun to its carriage. I had some 3x2mm magnets but these weren't small enough so ordered some 2x1mm. The first magnet drops into the hole in the gun carriage and is held in place with a small amount of epoxy putty.

The locating lug on the gun ended up being drilled out with the magnet placed inside. I didn't really plan it that way as I thought I'd have to cut off the lug and stick the magnet in its place but this way will be much more secure. For the metal Pak40 I bought separately I had to take a slightly different approach as the lug was much smaller so that one is drilled into the breech of the gun.

As always with magnets remember which way round the magnets need to go. I checked mine so many times before I glued them and even then I nearly got it wrong!

So there they are fully assembled and ready for basing. Hopefully this little bit of extra time and effort will pay off in the long run. I may even make a base to the guns to be stuck to during transit.

Thanks for reading!

Andy