Priming Over Magnets

In my previous post, I had pics of how I added magnets to the Khador Heavy Warjack kit.  Next, I had to find a way to primer the model without completely covering the magnets - while they are neodymium magnets and are very powerful, they're small, and a few coats of primer / paint / clearcoat over them will greatly diminish their effectiveness.

Luckily, I found a solution in the toy section of my local drugstore:

Silly Putty!  (Note: in the past, I've had good results using poster tack, but the store actually didn't have any.  I've also bought Silly Putty at the dollar store before, so it might be cheaper if you want to stockpile it).

I probably don't need to explain the concept too deeply: you pull off tiny bits of the Silly Putty (work it for a bit to get it soft) and press it over the magnets:

After that, you can prime the model as usual:

After the primer dries, you can pick off the Silly Putty:

After the primer had dried, I roughed in my basecoat color (Vallejo Model Air Fire Red) around the magnets:

Since I plan to paint the model using zenital airbrushing, I'll have to paint the model with the magnetized bits attached - to make this easier, I went ahead and basecoated the backsides of the magentized bits:

Since I was using the Model Air paints, it took 3 or 4 coast to get adequate coverage with a brush.

Next, I gave the backs of the pieces a coat of brush-on Citadel 'Ardcoat:

...I wish the reason for this was some cool technical tip, but the truth of the matter is that I needed to transport the model unassembled, and I wanted to protect the pieces from getting chipped up in the box:

...the backs will be sprayed with matte varnish once finished.  The process of covering the magnets with Silly Putty will be repeated when the model is airbrushed.