I’ve been assembling the Games Workshop plastic Giant I purchased recently and while admiring all the head and weapon options you have in the box I thought why should I have to pick just one? Fortunately I still have around 80 rare earth magnets left from my purchase from Aussie Magnets several years ago.
So I busted out my 1mm, 2mm and 3mm drill bits and started to drill a bunch of holes in the giant. As the figure is well, giant in 28mm scale, there was ample room to sink 3mm diameter by 2mm deep magnets into the limbs and hand choices. The first shot shows how I’ve placed the magnets on the main figure, after that it was just a matter of drilling out each and every hand and weapon option I wanted to use – which turned out to be all of them of course.
To place the magnets appropriately I used my own Blu Tack pinning method. Also If you’re wondering why I’m using three drill bits when one would suffice, it’s because I find sinking a guide hole and then drilling that out slowly to the right size gives you much more control than just slapping the 3mm bit against the plastic and hoping for the best. Control is particularly important when you’re drilling narrow pieces, or potentially drilling close to the surface of the sculpted plastic.
The hands turned out so well I magnetised the heads too. This required some careful drilling as the magnets were placed in the top of the skull as it’s the widest point of contact on the figure’s neck. The plastic does get thin up there though and I ended up leaving the magnets protruding about 0.5 mm out of the skull interior, rather than risk through drilling, resulting in tedious patching work. You can clearly see this in the photo. I drilled out all of the heads except the Chaos one, because frankly I think the horns look a little dopey – and I don’t play a Chaos force anyway.
Once the drilling and gluing was finished, I spent an amusing half an hour with my six year old son in the garage trying head and arm swaps. He liked the way you could pop the ‘enslaved giant’ collar on with the millstone, and then snap a number of different heads on over it, and also the way you could attach hands and then swivel them into different poses.
The rare earth magnets are easily strong enough to hold the head and smaller ‘free’ hands on during play. The weapon hands all stay in place fairly robustly except the large Orcish ‘dragon’s head’ club (see photo) which is really just too top heavy. It doesn’t detach from the figure, but will swivel downwards pretty easily. During play I suspect a little blu tack in the join will help stop that.
Now I just have to patch, prime and paint the beastie!
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Surely if you drilled the arm a little deeper and used 2 magnets it would hold the bid club, probably to late though =]
Looks good and glad to see you pulled your head ot of the DC waste lands
Mmm possibly, although that arm is pretty hollow past the first 2-3mm of wrist joint. I like the GW plastic Giant btw, probably my favourite plastic GW figure for a while. My only criticism would be his slightly boxy gut.
hehe, your right it has got a boxy gut, I wonder if it ate the last supply wagon he terrorised or if they coppied one of the GW Studio staff. If it the latter than no more pies for GW
Hmmm…why not counterweight the haft of the club with something? There might not be enough room to drill into it and hide the weight, but maybe you could add something like the pommel of a sword, or some kind of decorative hanging bit.
…or a rock with a hole in it.
If you added a short pin just to one side of the magnet on the hand, and a corresponding socket in the wrist, it will hold the dragon-club hand in position without interfering with any of the other hands.
You’re quite correct Fitz and I had considered that – and that’s probably what I will end up doing as it turns out the Dragon head club and the large gravestone/tree-trunk club are quite top heavy.
Hugh ? my giant has a club with swords , but then I had A LOT of fun chopping up plastic spare parts , and mine has a gut plate like a ogre , with dragon jaws eather side , had to put a cow on one back hip next to ogre meat cleaver just to balance the weight . . . still had left overs for my bits box ! ,one of GW’s best modles , but then i like plastic .