Iron Throne Phone Charger

I'm so hyped about the 7th season of Game of Thrones coming out, I had to make a related project - an Iron Throne phone charger!

Supply list:

• USB charger
• Plastic cocktail swords
• Silver acrylic paint
• Bronze acrylic paint
• Black spray paint
• 2mm foam
• Thick foam
• MDF

Tools used:

• Hot glue gun
• Heat gun
• Wood glue & nails

I used this USB cable because it was something I had lying around. I know, it's purple, but it's what I had, and I'll fix it up later. I'll also use two packs of these plastic cocktail swords (600 swords in total), and some other materials I'll get to soon.

I began preparing the cocktail swords by cutting off one part of the handle. Look at the before and after picture above to see which part. Just patiently worked my way through all of them, and that took a while. I'll put those aside for now.

I continued to make a basic shape of the throne out of some scrap MDF I had leftover from another project. I marked up the size of my phone first, and then drew a back piece that would be a bit wider than that. Then I marked the seat with the same width, and the depth I wanted. I cut out all the pieces with a band saw - the back, seat, front and sides of the throne.

I used both wood glue and tiny nails to attach the pieces together. The back didn't meet the sides, so it was a bit woobly, but I fixed that by gluing some angled brackets to the inside with some strong epoxy glue. Now it's all rigid.

The first picture is comparing what I have, and what it should look like. To create the actual shape of the throne I'll use some thick foam that I could cut into smaller pieces that looked somewhat like the shape I wanted, and used hot glue to attach it.

It looks kinda rough at this point, but I gradually built up on that with more foam. On top, I'll add a layer of thin, grey foam which will even out all the surfaces anyway.

I'll fix up the back first, because I have to adjust the placement of the cable. I covered the back with the thin foam, and started the long process of gluing on swords. The thickness of this sword layer will determine the distance from the back to where the phone and charger should be placed.

I lined up my phone up against the back, and drew a line at the front. I measured the right distance, and drilled a hole through from underneath for the cable. I had to drill two holes for it to fit the cable, and then file it to the exact shape.

Also, drilled a path at the back so the cable can lie smoothly against the table later.

As I had the position of the phone and charger, I could build up with foam around it, covering that with the thin grey foam. Before I continued, I made sure to cover up all the other surfaces as well.

In several places on the throne it looks like the swords are bent and twisted around some edges, so I used my heat gun to warm up the plastic and bent it to the shape I needed. Then I could glue it on where it fit.

I made sure to check how the phone fit before I started adding swords to the seat, and then I could carry on bending and gluing on swords.

Also, if you're wondering why I'm colour-coding the sections, it's simply because I found it easier to actually see the depth and layers of the swords, where to should fill in, and in which direction the swords were pointed. It would've looked more chaotic with all the colours in one place, at least to me.

For the top crown of the throne I only need the blades of the swords. I kept the handles, as I needed those later. Then I glued the blades around the edge. I could used those extra handles along the edge at the top, and along the three ridges on the back.

It took some time, but all the swords have been glued on. Looks like a very fabulous not-so-iron throne. I used the very few leftover swords to cover any holes that I thought were too large. Before painting, I had to spend some time removing glue threads from inbetween the swords. When it looked nice and clean, it was ready for the next step.

I used regular spray paint for indoor and outdoor projects that could be used on plastic. I coated the whole thing in black first, as this will bring out the right shades I need for the iron effect. It needed a couple of coats from different angles to get into all the nooks and crannies. It already looks alot better in black, but it needs a final touch.

I used this acrylic silver paint to make the throne look like it was made of iron. I tried a technique called dry brushing, which basically means that you're painting with close to no paint on the brush, and just lightly highlighting the correct parts of your object. There are a lot of nice and detailed tutorials on dry brushing on YouTube and other places, so check that out if you're interested.

I just slowly built up the iron colour with several layers to not make it too bright in the wrong places. I still wanted to keep a lot of the black, as it creates the right shading effect.

Just for comparison: on the last three pictures, the right side is painted with one layer of silver paint, while the left is the black base alone. With one or two more coats of silver, it's really going to look like iron.

I probably could've left it with just the silver coat, but I decided to use some bronze acrylic paint to create some extra depth. I was very careful not to use too much of this, I added a few spots here and there only, because too much would ruin the whole iron-look.

Finally, I could attach the cable. To get it into the right position, I connected it to my phone and pushed it in place. I chose to use hot glue because, despite that it may not be the strongest or most durable glue, it wouldn't pour down the sides of the charger and glue that to the phone.

Let it dry, plug it in, and it works! But I still wasn't a fan of that purple cable...

...so I decided to use the leftover spray paint to make it black. It would have been a better solution to just use a black cable from the beginning, but I didn't have that and oh well. Turned out good anyway. When that's dry, it's actually done!

I'm really happy with how it turned out, and trying the dry brushing was a lot of fun and a really cool effect. It took a lot of time to make it, but I'm glad I had the patience to finish it. Looks badass on my desktop, and not at all plastic!

Thanks for reading through, hope it was worth it!