Tutorial: Magnetizing Deff Dreads

As I bought my Deff Dreads, I did it because they are very flexible in battle. They can function as battle platforms for heavy weapons as well as fighting in close combat.
What I did not thought about at that time was, that the weapons have to be glued to the model if you do it as described in the instructions. That takes away a whole lot of the flexibility of this piece of wargear.

So I decided to magnetize them, so I can equip them as I need 'em. I searched the web for quite a while but did not find any tutorials on how to do this. So I tried it by myself...and: it worked!

So I decided to post a short tutorial on how to do this (or how I did it at least).

Here is what you need to magnetize the Deff Dreads: a (GW) model drill, glue and magnets of course. There are many other drills, so you don't need the one by GW. It's only important that the size of the drill fits the diameter of your magnets (maybe it should be a half millimeter bigger).
The glue should be designed to glue metal AND plastic, because this is exactly what we want to do.
Magnets can be ordered via the internet and aren't very expensive at all.

The magnets I use are very tiny. The picture above shows a single magnet and my finger for size comparison. The magnets must be small enough to fit in the models joint (as I will show below) and strong enoug to hold the weight of the weapons (which is luckily not that much at this case).

As I thought about magnetizing the Deff Dread, I was unsure if I can drill a little pit in its hull or if I would accidently drill a hole in it, so that the magnet don't fit anymore.
It is a bit tricky but possible. But you have to be very careful not to drill too deep. I drilled the pit inside the already existing pit in which the "ball-joint" of the weapons will come to rest and glued a magnet in it.

Now for another tricky part: drilling a pit in the "ball-joints" of the weapons. It's a bit hard to get the drill to grip. Nevermind if you don't hit the middle exactly, the results will still look okay. But make sure that the pit has a constant edge so that the glue can't flow out. And watch for your fingers while drilling ;-)

Important: watch for the correct polarization of the magnets on the Deff Dread and on the weapons. There is nothing more annoying than glueing the magnet wrong side up so that the weapon is pushed away by it. And getting an already glued magnet out of it socket is quite an ugly work (believe me, I did that mistake).

 And here are the results of the work. The Deff Dreads and all the available weapon options. As you can see, the magnets can not lift the whole weight of the melee arms, so their tips are hanging down. But I think that is not that bad.

I hope this short tutorial will help you to also make your Deff Dread as flexible as it is supposed to be wihout buying 6 of them for every weapon option ;-)

Greetings