Magnetizing a Stormwall / Hurricane (part 1)

When I first magnetizined my Hammersmith / Centurion , I learned some things about magnetization. And I learned when assembling my first huge-base model (the Storm Strider) that it was also quite a job. Now, I've purchased my first colossal. It's both of those difficulties combined.

There aren't a ton of resources online to help deal with the assembly and magnetization of a Stormwall / Hurricane. I did find LockGod's guide and I'm referencing it quite a bit, but I feel that there's more information to be had on this topic, so I'm hoping to create a resource here, and document my own successes and failures as I assemble and magnetize my own Stormwall / Hurricane.

The instructions that come with the kit are pretty good, and initial assembly went very quickly. Maybe that was part of the problem - I felt that I couldn't get a good grip on what parts of the model would need to be magnetized until I'd at least assembled enough of it to see what I was working with. I used a pair of wire cutter type clippers I had to cut out most of the plastic bits, then used hobby files to clean up the worst of the hanging plastic chunks.

Once I had the body, arms, and legs assembled, I had a good picture of what the final model would look like, and I began looking at which parts would need to be magnetized. I left the arms unattached, and didn't glue the upper body to the lower body. This, I'd thought, would allow me to evaluate things before attaching anything I might not want to.

I finally decided to magnetize the upper body to the lower body in order to aid in storage. This presented one problem, which I'll detail below. I also decided to magnetize the arms, again for ease in storage. This would ideally also make the arms posable, although I'm still worried that the weight of the arms might mean they'll simply swing downwards.

In addition, I wanted to be able to swap parts so I could have either a Hurricaine or a Stormwall. The following are the parts that will need to be magnetized for swappability.

• Head: I could easily glue on just one head, but I'm doing so many magnets that why wouldn't I just allow them to be swappable? It's one of the easier parts to magnetize.
• Arc Node / Storm Hat: Only the Hurricaine has an arc node - the Stormwall has this weird thing I'm just calling a Stormhat.
• Shock Fists / Bucklers: These clip onto the forearms over the hands.
• Big Guns / Storm Emitters: The larger weapons that fit into a track.
• Chain Guns / Cannons: The smaller weapons, and probably one of the most difficult bits to mount.

I believe I'm looking at small magnets for all of the above. That's 3 magnets for the heads, 3 for the arc node / stormhat, 6 for the big weapons, 6 for the little weapons, and 6 for the forearm pieces. So we're looking at 24 small magnets. Additionally, I'll want to order 4 slightly larger ones for the arms, and 2 for the waist which are probably larger than that. The trick with larger magnets isn't so much the size, it's that these things are so strong that if I get too-strong magnets, the pull will be strong enough to break any green stuff or superglue I use and tear the magnet right out of the model. I'll need to closely examine the slots and try to guesstimate the right size magnets.

So right off the bat, before even ordering magnets, I've noticed problems. Hopefully reading these can help you to avoid similar errors when putting together your own Stormwall / Hurricane.

When first clipping out the storm pod pieces, I accidentally clipped off the tabs for the first one. As soon as I went to assemble it, I realized my error, so the second two are fine. But I'm going to have to do something with paper clip fragments and green stuff to repair one.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do about magnetizing the waist, since there's a piece which is supposed to be glued in place to connect the body to the legs. You can see this piece in my hand if you scroll way up to the photo showing the torso atop the legs. I'm thinking maybe I can glue just the top and have the bottom touch the bottom without actually being connected to it, but I'm going to have to keep an eye on this. Could be tricky.

And the big one. I now wish I'd waited to glue together the right and left sections of torso. The Colossal's torso is three two-piece sections: right, left, and center are each made of two halves which glue together, and then these three connect. The right and left have a sizable space between them, and I could have done some work inside this section to make two bits of this process far easier. Firstly, I could have followed LuckGod's example and put a large magnet inside to connect the arms through the plastic, as larger magnets are easily strong enough to make this happen. Secondly, I could have stuffed a big chunk of green stuff up against the gap where the small weapons connect, then drilled into that to attach a magnet. Now, I'll need to find alternate solutions for each of these two problems. I'm thinking I'll just have to drill into the arm socket to do magnets traditionally. Maybe I'll use 3 small magnets in a triangle to prevent unwanted arm rotation. And I'll probably have to stuff that whole void inside the plastic with green stuff to make things work - that's a lot of wasted green stuff. Maybe I can use cheaper putty for all but the very surface stuff.

There's a lots to figure out here still. I'll post again once I take next steps. I'm hoping to order magnets within the next few days.