Thursday, April 11, 2024

Making magnetic counters

The previous post on cube markers got me thinking that perhaps it would be a good idea to show how I make magnetic counters and the metal underbases they sit on. IMHO magnetic counters work the best of all the ways I have tried (and there have been a lot of them!) to do on-table bookkeeping in a way that is clear, discreet and fuss-free.

So, magnets. I use magnetic sheeting which I bought at Maizey (suppliers of signage materials) but one can buy it easily enough elsewhere and it's not expensive. I printed out the counter artwork on adhesive paper and stuck it on the magnetic sheeting. The end result was cut out and stuck back-to-back to create two magnetic sides.

Next the metal underbases. For this I bought a coffee tin, put the coffee into a plastic tub and removed the label paper.


I bought a metal cutter from a hardware shop and cut the top and bottom off the tin, then used a hammer to flatten the middle section into a sheet. Here are the remains of the last tin I used.


I then cut the steel sheet into rectangular sections, of four different sizes. That done, I stuck some bond paper on the one side and then coated it with silica gel - the stuff you use to seal showers. Also cheap and readily available even in supermarkets. The underbases would now not slide down hilly slopes - something that had bugged me for years when playing DBA and other rulesets


I glued some magnetic sheeting on the underside of my figure stands and voila! they stuck firmly on the steel underbases.


As did the counters.


And I've lived happily ever after. 😊



6 comments:

  1. Nice results but I would have taken the easy approach by buying pre-cut steel and magnetic bases and be done with it.

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  2. You can get ferrosheets from Tiny Tin Troops in the UK. Pretty cheap.
    http://www.tinytintroops.co.uk/Bases/Flex_Mag_sheets.htm

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  3. Ferrosheets incidentally are like magnetic sheeting, but are not magnetised, which means they stick nicely to magnetic sheeting but without the problems of the north-south-north-south alignment of two magnetised sheets stuck to each other.

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  4. Just found out I can get ferrosheets in South Africa for R17,25 per sheet measuring 305x420mm. I'm ordering 10.

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