Magnetizing small pieces

[Quickdraw]

I posted this question on the Spartan forum as well but I thought I would comb this bright communities collective brain as well.

Specifically I'm interested in attaching Ottoman minarets to the ship. I have three possible solutions:
Glue them (breakage), magnets (incorrect depth and vertical angle), pin and glue (again, possible breakage and possible incorrect vertical angle).

Anytime I use magnets it's always a mess but they are internal so it doesn't matter. These are such small pieces (2mm at the base) that I don't know how to make it perfect.
I'm thinking about sinking a small flat head screw into the base of the minaret and then placing a magnet into the part where it attaches to the ship.....
Has anyone experimented with using a metal "connection" like a screw instead of two magnets?

Any other ideas would be super helpful.

[Andrewchristlieb]

I've done metal and magnet connections in the past, but always on larger pieces where you can get a good amount of surface area for the magnet to grip to.

I'm not familiar with Dystopian stuff, but from a quick search it looks like this is some kind of tower? I would think you would be a lot better off just pinning it. I would want to put it into a vice since it's so small and carefully use a very small pin vise to drill into it. I'd go pretty deep on that part to try and secure it as best possible.

[Quickdraw]

Exactly, they are small towers. The ship is resin and the tower is metal.
Pinning seems like it will be the tried and true method.
What I'm worried about there is getting the angle just incorrect the slightest bit and the whole tower will end up crooked.

[Andrewchristlieb]

Oh yeah if it's metal that can be a pain. If you use a light metal rod (think paper clip flexibility) you should still be good even if the hole is slightly skewed since you can just glue the rod into the tower and use a pair of needle nose pliers to tweak the angle of the rod. If you can get about a 1/4" into both sides you should have enough wiggle room on either side. I had to do this on my metal Emperor's Champion's sword since the blade kept separating from the handle and it's been rock solid since. Given the thickness of that blade I'm thinking this would be pretty similar. Just watch your fingers with metal, a clamp of some sort is very recommended to avoid Swiss cheese fingers .

[Quickdraw]

That is a good point. There isn't any reason I couldn't just bend it slightly if it seems off.
Seeing as how these are such small pieces does anyone have a good method of creating a shallow divot to start my pin vise? That way it doesn't go all squirrelly when I start drilling. Even a 1/2mm off of center could give me some grief with placement.