Now you are making me think hard, I have been out of the business since '89. Yes, we were making NeFe then.
Square or rect. is better so that you don't have gaps. They are a real bear to put together since they are magnetized. You need good clamps and fixtures because the repulsive forces are huge.
NeFe is nice because of the high B, you can get a lot of field. The demag that you get on slight heating isn't a permanent strucural change. But you would need to remagnetize in order to recover it. Mag'ing large assemblies is very tricky.
For high temp products (Alnico, and both 1:5 and 2:17 SmCo) we used ScotchWeld 2214. This is a 'B' staged epoxy with a fairly high cure temp (350F) and great strength. The epoxy and the bonds were stronger than the magnets. For working with NeFe we used a two part epoxy so that we could use low cure temp.
I would glue the magnets to a plate, and then to the pole pieces. The multiple bondlines don't help your magnetic field, but in these materials the impact is small.
How large of a magnet are you looking to build? I can look and see what I have around.
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Corrosion never sleeps, but it can be managed.