Over the past few weeks I have had the pleasure of working with photographer Clay Patrick McBride, building props for his recent photo shoot with Zakk Wylde (founder of the band Black Label Society and former guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne). Clay asked me to build a rusted, “king of the underworld,” crown and scepter that Zakk Wylde would wear and hold while sitting on a thrown in a gothic castle. Clay and I met, went over some initial details and then we checked in throughout the process to make sure everything was on target. Everywhere I go my eyes are constantly scanning for unusual pieces of metal, and I had a stockpile of beat-up, rusted goodies that I was excited to incorporate into this project. Clay gave great pointers and was always open to bounce ideas off of. When it was all said and done I met up with everyone after shoot, met Zakk Wylde, and clay took this photo of us.

The Crown required more fabrication from stock metals than the scepter. I used a cone calculator online to figure out the proper cut to make in a flat sheet of steel to create the base. It's weird holding a rainbow shaped piece of flat metal and hoping that the two ends will meet together and make a cone shape, but I put it in my ring roller and it did it! I cut a 10 degree cut into the square tube posts to make the crown start to become more vertical. Then I added fence spikes, also welded in at an angle, so they pointed straight up. To rust the stock metal I submerged it in a salty bath and gave it 50amps of juice with a car charge. I left it in there Electroetching for a couple hours and it came out with a good amount of red/orange rust as desired. At that point I didn't know exactly how far to take it, so before proceeding I contacted clay and he gave me some pointers and the go ahead for a totally raw, mean looking crown with thick chain and barb wire. When I tried it on the heavy crown had some painful pressure points against my dome so I tied in some rubber supports cut from a blown inner tube. This peeked my interest to do some research and I found one King's crown that weighed 75 lbs!