Magnetic movement dials

I've been rather obsessed about earth magnets and just how damn strong they are and what could I use them for next... movement dials!

I the standard plastic rivets do the job, but are a bit stiff which puts wear on the dial, so enter earth magnets and Gorilla glue, my little friends and a few minutes and you'll have dial that is smooth and stays put, but that you probably now won't want to get to near to your mobile phone. Well there is one down side. You'll want to order 5/16" x 1/16" earth magnets and I bought these from www.magnet4us.com

It's a quick job, pop the plastic rivet out with a pen. Glue the inside of the dial, the card soaks it up and be generous as these earth magnets are slippery little suckers.

I then lay the dial surface down on something flat like a cutting board and push it onto the magnet. I then push the magnet against the cutting board to ensure it's flush with the dial surface. 

Repeat for the other half of the dial and then leave to fully dry. I have had to redo a couple as the magnets have such a slippery surface and the glue doesn't always get a go anchor to it. If you have any other suggestion please leave a comment.

Thanks and hope you enjoyed the tutorial.

Lightsaber presentation box

Finally after many years of building the Luke ANH replica from original parts and my MHS (modular hint system) Obi-Wan ANH I stumbled across the perfect box to protect and present them in while visiting the Container Store in Rockville. It couldn't be a better size off the shelf and at $25 not a bad price.

I will be posting a little more details on the builds of both of these lightsabers later, especially as the Obi-Wan ANH has an illuminated crystal core inside with nano-biscotte electronics. The Luke ANH has just been about building a faithful replica using original parts and trying to find the parts of the right quality and authenticity.

B-Wing rotating magnetic mount

Love B-Wings but don't love them vertically? How about 90º or 45º or even 17.5º? Fed up with tight fitting mounts on other ships? On any given day I change my mind a lot and I'm always tweaking how things look and B-Wings for X-Wing Miniatures is something I couldn't tweak and that irked me, so after a few Google searches I found the solution, earth magnets.

They're ridiculously small, perfectly formed, powerful, and fairly high priced, I guess you can't have it all. Though eBay came up trumps with a pack of 50 3/32" x 1/16 earth magnets and x2 drill bits for $17 + postage. Then you just need a steady hand and a dot of super glue.

The 3/32 size magnet and drill is key as this is small enough to drill into the vertical peg to mount the magnet of all X-wing miniatures bases. I've used them on all my ships as it just makes mounting them that much easier and I didn't like the way some ships needed a firm pressure to mount them to the peg, now it's a simple clip and they're done.

They can still spin which may not suit all and unlike other mods using earth magnets and BB gun pellets which allow the ship to bank, this mod won't do that. I did try with some BB pellets but just couldn't get the ships to sit firmly enough, they'd slide down the side... not the look I was going for. I think this was down to me not recessing the magnet into the female half of the ship stem, but give it a go and see what you think.

With the larger ships like the YT-1300 and Firespray their triangular stem fittings like I said have been tight, so a little bit of filling on the male half on the straight edges of the triangle sorted this problem.

Then careful drilling, a couple of earth magnets later and your YT-1300 as heavy as this girls is will barrel roll no problem without coming unstuck.

I have had a few problems along the way, check the polarity of all your magnets before gluing them in so all bases are the same, or you'll have you're very own repulser life bases, nice. When gluing the magnet make sure they are parallel to the base or your ships will look lopsided, a little jig can solve this. 

If you're like your fleet converted and haven't got steady hands, contact me at and I can convert your fleet no problem.

YT-1300 engine decals

Like X-wing Miniatures and have a YT-1300? If you do but don't have the time to or gear to do a custom paint job on the engines then this may be for you.

I stumbled across the metal bikini's blog on just that very subject and he's blog is well worth reading if you're a fan of X-wing miniatures, there's loads of great tips and custom guides there from engines, game mats, asteroids assorts.

I liked his version of the YT-1300 engine decal, but I wanted to copy the engine from a pict I found of the Millennium Falcon, it looked great and my background in graphics and photoshop thought I'd give it go.

It took a bit of tweaking, measuring and adjusting colors after prints, but after a while I got there and I'm quite satisfied with the end result. I've attached a jpeg of the engine decals and all you need to do is print them out on 4x6 photo paper without boarders, I do have a caveat though which is all printers are different it may come out larger/smaller or a different color hue. The end result once trimmed out should look like something below and be 79mm in length.

Then with a credit card or similar you can tease the paper engine print into place, no glue is needed as it's a tight fit which is nice should you wish to reverse the decal at any point. I used gloss paper, but think matt may look better. If you try it out leave a comment with how it worked out for you. The YT-1300 engine deca sheet is below, just click on this engine graphic link it to download the full size version. 

I think that just about wraps it up. If you are part of NOVA Squadron on Facebook (which is an X-Wing Miniatures group based in North Carolina, Virgina, Maryland, Washington DC, West Virginia and Pennsylvania) contact me through the Facebook page and I'll bring my any extra decals I have to game meets which you can have.

Have fun and if you have and improvements or YT-1300 mods, please share them. Thanks