[GZG] Re: Bases

I too have beem making my own. The Ninja Magic ones look like they'll be
really nice, but they are a touch pricey. And they're not available, which is
the worse case.

I've been using the following (rough outline) method.

I buy 11mm magnetic barrel clasps at jewelry stores. On sale, I get them

for about a dime a piece, in packs of 8. I then make a "post" out of aluminum
tubing. The tubing is the same diameter as the barrel part of the clasp. I cut
a sleeve of aluminum tubing that fits over the "post" so that there is
somehting to hold the magnetic barrel onto. If you just had my post with it
sleeve on it, it looks like a cannon with a muzzle break. These three pieces
are superglued together so that the magnetic barrel and the sleeve are flush.
The sleeve (obviously) overlaps the barrel and the post to hold the barrel
onto the post.:)

The post part of the clasp (the part that goes into the barrel) has a circular
tab on the end. I cut this off with a pair of nippers. I then

use a really smoothly operating electric drill at really slow speed to drill a
wider hole in the bottom of my space ships It's actually more of a crater than
a hole. This is where i glue on the magnetic post.

My base post gets glued onto... well, a base. I'm using the old GeoHex
bases for now, at least for my current fleet-in-production, or until I
run out. I drill a hole to fit the post into, and glue it into place.

> From this point, I paint the ship and paint the base. Now I have a

Two caveats that I've run into.

1) Polarity. Seems that not all of the clasps have the same polarity. I
sometimes notice that the base will actively repulse a ship. Irritating,

but once I have enough bases and have them all decaled and labelled, it won't
be a problem for me.

2) Spinnage. SOME of the base are a touch loose, magentically speaking.

Bump them and the ship will spin a bit. This has not been a huge problem yet,
but it could bother some folks. The ninja magic clasps have those nice teeth
on them which will prevent this. Drool.:)

Hope this helps!

J

John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University

> On Fri, 20 Oct 2006, David Stokes wrote:

> James Moore wrote:
I saw
> them at GenCon and have been waiting with baited breath for them to
The
> ones he got from his current manufacturer had lots of faults and have
It's
> not known when they will be available again. Pity, they do look nice.