Happy birthday to me

Ok, three days late, but that's still under 1% of the way to the next one so I'm going to claim it anyway. I had a lot of fun, was the subject of much generosity, and generally felt feted, feasted and well-loved. Nice!

There was even a rare outburst of gaming giftage from my parents who got me the first hit of a new drug starter set of the Star Wars: X-Wing miniatures game. It. Is. Totally. Awesome! Seriously, I love it, and so do the two boys, despite them never having watched the films (the younger one isn't ready yet but it would cause more strife than it's worth to show it just to the elder). They picked it up quickly (the mechanics are simple) and even pulled off a frankly excellent feint and pounce manoeuvre between them in a pair of x-wings through an asteroid field that allowed them both to double-team and evaporate my lead TIE while remaining out of any return fire arcs. Curses!

The only downside to the game I have found so far is the delicacy of the laser cannons on the x-wings. I had a real scare when one of them got stuck on its peg and when it came off I'd knocked a cannon skew. Cannon duly fixed, I decided to "improve" the stands...

First, fleet and tools assembled - clippers, scalpel, superglue, and 2mm pin-vise.

That metal rod to the left of the glue in the picture above is actually a stack of 2mm diameter, 1mm thick neodymium magnets from my bits box

First I enlarged the hole in the peg-mount under each fighter to remove the flat bit that locates the peg as designed - this make the hole exactly 2mm - and popped a magnet in flush. Then I snipped off the corresponding peg from the support stand, drilled another 2mm hole into it and fitted another magnet, also flush. Like this:

Then rinse and repeat for all your fighters, in my case, eight. Doing all the cutting etc. by eye meant that they weren't all entirely horizontal edges, but the slight variation gives them an acceptably "realistic" air of movement. Well, that's my excuse anyway!

If anyone is considering doing this themselves, I'd actually recommend getting 3mm diameter magnets to match the outer diameter of the stands. Stick one one the end of the bit on the ship, snip the peg off the stand and glue the other magnet flat. No drilling required! As it was, I had the 2mm magnets already so I made do and mended. In other magnet-related news, I only got one set of magnets the wrong way round, by which I mean that seven ships can go on any one of seven stands, but the eighth ship and stand can only go with each other because of the polarity. Not too bad!

As for the strength of the magnets, more than good enough for this size/weight of fighter:

I haven't done it for my new "present to myself" toy, but I may yet revisit the idea if I pick up some larger/stronger magnets at some point to mount this piece of junk:

May the force be with you. Always.
Rab