My first steps using magnets to customize my STC tanks.

Here I'm posting my first steps in having a fully customizable STC task Force, first step I  did was to set up  the magnets for the roof doors.

the key here is to properly align the holes for the magnets so they are part of the wall and don’t raise from it a lot.

Next decision I took was to don’t use magnets in the door themselves, why?

well that is easy:

1. Because I have only 200 magnets and it might sound  like a lot but it is not specially when taxes and transport cost raise the cost for each magnet to Q1.00 (about 1/8 of dollar) and we all must remember that when modeling each cent maters.
2. Alignment compatibility, it is more easy that way because I don’t have to properly align each and every one of the magnets in all the tanks in the proper direction.

Next question is: why to waste my magnets in the roof?

For this one I must confess that I like the idea of representing  rhinos that have troops with the door closed and those empty with open ones. and to be more truthful I want to display the interior once in a while.

for the door I tried first to drill some longitudinal holes in the door hinges where I could pass some metal pins, it didn’t worked, next I tried using my drill to do a cross hole but it didn’t work too, that is because in both cases the grip was to weak and in one instance I broke the hinge of the door and in the other I broke the drill.

My solution was to sand the hinges with a sharp thin file to create a canal in the inner and the exterior parts of the hinges, that made a lot of difference here are the photos:

 

with that I managed to get the position I wanted as you can see here:

It has a good grip on the door.

next time I hope to complete the magnetization of all the doors, stay tune.