Altoids Tin Travel Games - Pocket Size Fun

Step 5: Make Your Game Pieces Part 2

Once your game pieces are all formed you'll need to affix a magnet to the bottom of them. Depending on the size of the rare-earth magnets you use you may have to break them up a little with a hammer to get smaller pieces ***WEAR SAFTEY GLASSES*** if you have to break them apart. [Edit] Alternately you could use two pairs of pliers and break them in have again and again until they are small enough, probably a safer method ;)

When I made mine I thought just fitting the magnets into the Fimo would be enough but as you can see in the attached image they'd fall out.

You can do it one of two ways:
1) You can do what I did and try to form-fit the magnets into your game pieces first, bake them, and then glue them.

2) Keep your game pieces flat on the bottom, bake them, then glue them in place.

Either way should work, my method was due to trial and error.

Comments

[Frederbee]

For the magnets, when I was in elementary school we had earrings that were no-pierce. They would be shaped like the stud, about a 1/8" round cylinder, and would magnetically cling through the ear. These would be roughly the size you need

[Frederbee]

Or these if you go with the colour coding
http://www.claires.com/store/goods/Teens/cat310120/Clips-%26-Magnetics/p52199/Colored-Gemstones-Magnetic-Earring-Set-of-9/

[panascakes]

http://unitednuclear.com/magnets.htm

[greatpanda]

it should be noted in this step that many artificial magnets can lose their magnetism around 350F, so try baking a piece of your magnet first before you try to bake them. I suppose an easy way would be to stick one to the rack snd see if it falls off :)

[jphphotography]

I was using rare earth magnets and after baking they still seemed as wickedly strong as ever. I can't vouch for other magnet types but these held up fine.

[malachus]

It should also be possible to embed the magnets under a layer of polymer clay on the bottom of the piece. It will weaken the pull of the magnet, but it should still be strong enough to keep it in place and the magnet can't fall out.