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RE: Tactile Wargaming
BTW, I just had one of those, duh!, moments.
For the best 9and cheapest) way of making magnetic game pieces is not to embed the magnets in the fame piece (two per piece non the less to make them flippable) but embed) but rather embed a small powerful rare earth magnet in a base piece (like the clear acrylic pieces I was suing for bases) and embed a small piece of metal in each piece like a small steel hex nut. If the hex nut is as thick as the piece then the pieces stack well and the hex nut (being attracted by magnets) then allows other stacked pieces (each with the embedded steel hex) to be held firmly as well concentrating the magnetic flux lines from the bases magnet. Small hex nuts are relatively cheap. One can use a hole punch to punch a hole in them in the cardboard, insert the nit, then glue the front and back sheet that has the piece art work to each side covering the hex nut
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made one this morning using a 1/4 steel hex nut. They need to be steel and not stainless steel for the later do not work with magnetics. The thickness of the cardboard need to be about the same as the thickness of the hex nut to be embedded. With these embedded hex nuts and using the magnetic bases one can secure a stack of pieces to a magnetic white board or a piece of sheet metal. This works fine on a table and perhaps might work for a wall mount but I have my doubts there based on my testing in that the strength of the magnet falls off for a stack of two or more counters that lets the pieces slide. just from their weight Thus for wall mounts, embedded the magnets in the pieces themselves is probably the way to go using two magnets one flipped with the polarity of the other, i.e will likely be more expensive.
The pieces can be flipped in that the hex nut has no polarity and takes what ever the polarity of the magnet in the base piece. And I am thinking that one can fill the hole in the hex nut with white glue to give support to the top and bottom cover paper that has the piece front and back artwork.
This is definitely a cheaper and and easier method than embedded the magnets in the pieces themselves.
I just noticed that if I stack two sheets of the latest counters on top of each other then they are about the same thickness as my hex nuts. So if I glued two of those surplus marker cardboard pieces together they would make a core for embedding ta hex nut. So by this I can put to use any surplus marker sheets and use them to make nice looking magnetic cardboard counter (via the embedded hex nut). And I just tested using my 1/4" rare earth magnetic disk as is (i.e. not embedded in a clear acrylic square as a base and that even works better for holding the magnetic pieces in that there is a small space under the piece that makes it easier to lift with one's finders.
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