"Basing 1:600 Tumbling Dice Aircraft?" Topic

Just curious to get your tips (or links to your tutorials).

Anyone have success just gluing magnets to the bottom of these aircraft? But a magnet small enough to fit the fuselage might not be large enough to hold to a flight stand…

Do you drill a hole? If so, any advice on how to get the hole started in the right place?

The Ninja Magic adapters look like they would look too large on these models…

I drill a hole center fuselage, drop the magnet in with a drop of crazy glue, then prime. I use clear styrene rods and glue another magnet to that. Drill a hole in a 30mm square base (3mm thick). I dont glue the rods into the base because I have varying lengths of rod to determine altitude. Very simple.

I glued rare earth magnets right onto the belly of the planes, no drilling. But getting the suckers on was a fuss, what with tiny magnets and planes and big fat fingers. Every now and then the magnet was on the wrong way so I had to take them off and re-glue…

I also had magnets on the top of the clear hex flight stands that I purchased from Dom's Decals, hence the odd magnet in the wrong way repelled rather than attracting…

I just glue 'em straight on, no drilling – glue a magnet on the stand first, then let that dry. Then pop another magnet on top (so you know the polarity's right) and dot a bit of 2-part epoxy on top. Let that nearly cure before sticking the plane on – cos the epoxy's quite "plastic" at that stage the plane will stick on readily and not immediately fall off. Let it cure completely, and then remove the plane and its magnet from the stand and its magnet….

I drill a hole (starting with a smaller -.040"ish- drill to center it easier) and then machine a countersink (so that the magnet goes in as deep as possible). I won't make any claims to it being significantly stronger than surface-gluing (beyond an armchair-engineer 'it seems like it should be' feeling) – I look at the recessing process as lessening the visual impact of the magnet. The hole also aids assembly a tad insofar as the magnet can be held on the tip of a small screwdriver or knife blade: Once it's in the (glued) hole it will stay in place when the tool is slid away.

Use epoxy, and make sure to let it dry overnight, or better yet, 24 hours.

Gluing to the bottom of the aircraft works just fine.

I used to drill, but stopped doing that, since the flight stand stalk will be there anyway.

No drilling, just glue them straight on.

I have a magnet stuck to a piece of mdf that I use as a guide for the polarity of the magnet that's going to be stuck on the model.

I pop a magnet onto the guide then sqeeze a little gel superglue on to the upper magnet, then stick the model on top.

After a few minutes I just slide (not lift) the model away.

Job done.

Yep, slide the planes off the magnets rather pull upward to remove them from the stand.

DM

Clear flying bases from EM4
link
About $1.50 USD for 15

3x1mm rare earth magnets
auction
About $8 USD for 100

= 18c a stand

1. File the top of the flight stand pole flat. Attach a magnet.

2. No drilling. Simply glue a magnet to the underside of the aircraft

Protip: Make sure the polarity of the magnets attract and do not repel each other :-)

link
As you can see from Neshers and F-105s in the top photo, you can only barely see the magnets under the aircraft anyway – this is 1/600 not 1:76 so attempting fiddly stuff on a model that is not anatomically correct anyway is kinda gilding the lilly.

Planes can be removed eaily from their base for storage.

I use 1/8 x 1/32 disk magnets, glued directly to the model. They are so thin as to be nearly invisible. For the big models I drill into the model and use a 1/8 x 1/16 disk magnet.

If the stands have neodymium magnets you can simply stick Litko's flex steel to the bottom of each aircraft. A hole punch will make about the right size.

about the polarity… I made some stands with the magnets on one side, some on the other side… so if one stand repels one model (some polarity), I grab another stand and try, until they stick together (you have 50/50 probabilities) :-)

I also glue straight to the aircraft belly. I don't use a second magnet on the flight stand however. I either use my home-made stands, which use staples as the upright portion, or I glue a small nut to the peg portion of the flight stand (for aeronef, using Brigade Model's clear plastic stands). These two methods keep me from messing around with things like polarities, which I'm sure to screw up.

Pictures of the home-made bases are here:
link

Chris

In an ideal world, is there a convention for the polarity of the magnets on the planes, such as glue the north pole to underside of the plane…or the opposite?

I'll be doing some CY6 stands soon (1/300, sorry), and would like to make a good go of it.

--Matt

Have you considered using 360 degree nose mounts? We use it for our 1/350 scale planes in "In Clouds of Glory". They are made from plastic, but 1/600 scale white metal planes are light enough to use this method. glue a piece of tube underneath the plane, bend a piece of thin piano wire and insert sideways into a piece of heat shrink tube, pull the mount on top of a flight stand made of a piece of carbon fibre rod:

Here the sharpened rods are inserted directly into the foamboard. But there is no reason that this method cannot be used with a heavy hexbase.

- Gilmore

I use Tumbling Dice planes with the magnets directly glued. First run pointed out to me that you glue the magnet before painting the blasted plane.

I use a hex base and post with a 3mm rare earth magnet on (the ones from Dom's Decals)

I use 2mm or 3mm rare earth magnet on the planes – size based upon the plane size – 2mm for fighters and smaller bomber types – anything from Japanese Claudes theourgh Spits and Bf110s up to Blenheims have gone on a 2mm, 3mm on big and awkward shaped planes from Hampden size and up – especially the Catalinas.

Normally there is an obvious place I can spot the glue to put the magnet on – and shape of fuselage does affect magnet choice. I had to shave a bit of theunderside of the Catalinas to provide a mount point though

Drill hole in plane using pin vice. Glue in short length of piano wire.
Make base from 18mm MDF, Drill hole and glue in short length of piano wire.
Get lots of thin aluminium tube of a size to fit snugly over the wire. Cut into 1", 2" etc lengths up to 6".
Slip the correct length tube over the wire, plane plugs in the other end, and you have variable height stands. I do prefer air games to be 3 dimensional.

I have some new laser-cut bases in the offer: generally they are for Hind Commander range so they are 2cm*2cm in two variants: vehicle and aircraft (with hole in the middle for wire so something similar).
I will not be humble: they costed some money, but their quality is excellent! They are made with 1mm black, thick material and covered with very hard, white, acril, fine texture, perfect for wash or drybrush.
You may get them from Assault Publishing web store, althought I have them in the offer for 1 day, so I haven't taken any photos and made announcements on web page.

I also do not use magnets on my bases, I glue a steel ball bearing to the base and use a ring magnet to attach the aircraft.

link

This allows the aircraft to pitched and banked.

OK lets try this, here is a photo with the ball joint mounts in play:

Windward, that looks great! I'm looking to mount mine and that looks the best. Where did you get your ball bearings and magnets. What sizes.

Dunno if Windward will spot this thread, so…

I got my magnets from K&M
link

…and ball bearings from the local hardware store (in the aisle with all the NBWs and screws and such).

Since superglue doesn't really stick to ziplock bags, I always put a small strip of bag material between the magnets. This means you can use a bit more glue to put everything together.