Iron Throne Fit for Scott’s Name Day

The premiere of the final season of Game of Thrones magically happened on Scott’s Name Day! I’m sure you’re not surprised that another themed party quickly began formulating. A GoT birthday party would not be complete without an Iron Throne fit for a king. I’m betting on Scott #ForTheThrone – although Frito & Frodo are definitely in the fight!

Thanks to this awesome blog, I was able to create my own “Iron” Throne with a few tweaks, including an upgrade to a wooden chair. Although it’s so large I had to build it in the basement so it will be a permanent fixture in our house 🙂

Supplies

Throne:

• Chair (wooden or plastic)
• 24-40 Yardsticks (super cheap from Lowes)
• Two 4×8″ – 1/2″ thick foam insulation
• 2-3 Black Craft Foam Rolls
• Spray paint: black primer, black hammered, silver hammered, pewter gray, metallic gold
• Liquid Nails, Great Stuff, various screws, latex caulk
• Detail/Palm Sander
• Miter Saw

Platform:

• 48″x88″ plywood
• 5 – 2″x10″x96″ boards (2 cut to 88″ length and 3 cut to total of 6 – 45″ lengths)
• Black spray paint
• Screws/Nails

Select a Chair

We had an old wooden Cardinals chair that worked perfectly. You can also get by with a plastic chair, but it wouldn’t be as sturdy or comfy. With a palm sander, sand the entire chair to remove any flaking paint.

Frame the Throne

Using yardsticks, frame out the chair to make it easy to attach lots of swords. To make the front and back extend out a little, use small pieces of wood to extend the sticks out. Criss-cross sticks throughout to provide plenty of area for attaching more foam swords to come. Use a miter saw for cutting the sticks/boards, and use screws to attach to the chair. Pre-drill the yardsticks to avoid splitting, and also pre-drill into the chair when using longer screws to attach boards.

Attach sticks to the back to create the framework for mounting the downward swords, being sure to stagger the lengths by at least 2″ ensuring the middle sticks are the tallest.

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Make Large Downward Swords & Hilts

Using foam insulation and a utility knife, form the 6 downward swords. Cut both front and back swords. The handle sections were 6″ long and 1.5″ wide (same width as a yardstick). The swords were measured to line up with the top of the chair (back sword should always be longer). Cut 2 small slivers for each sword to fill the sword gap by the yardstick (0.25″ wide – same as thickness of yardstick – and same length as sword section). Use a palm sander on both the front & back pieces to sand the edges to round, narrow, and shape the sword & handle. Using Liquid Nails, glue swords and slivers to the yards sticks, clamping in a couple spots to hold. After dried, sand a little more along edges to line out all the pieces and finish shaping the sword & handle.

With a utility knife, create foam hilts that will fit around the larger part of the sword. Mine had a 1″ wide hilt with a hole 3″x1.5″ (total 5″x3.5″), and I cut off the corners. Using a palm sander, sand edges to smooth and angle into a hilt. Slide each hilt down the sword (it should be snug and will help to hold to the sword pieces together during drying).

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Fill in Gaps

With Great Stuff, fill in any gaps and allow to cure (~8 hours). Cut off excess with utility knife and then sand until smooth. With caulk, fill in gaps by the hilts. This step is optional if you aren’t too worried about gaps or plan to add extra foam swords to cover them.

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Create Foam Insulation Swords

Using foam insulation, create a template sword (I used my Aragorn sword as a model and made them a little thicker). Then cut out lots of large swords (at least 14 will be needed for the 7 main swords). Attach 2 swords together with Liquid Nails and then sand to shape into sword (Alternatively, you can do single sided swords if you want to speed it up). I created extra single-sided large swords to put along outside of chair. Create partial and smaller swords as needed for front and sides.

Total Foam Insulation Swords = 41

• 7 large double-sided
• 13 large single-sided
• 5 medium (single-sided)
• 6 small (single-sided)
• 4 half swords (single-sided) for front
• 6 partial (double-sided) swords with hilts mounted to chair

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Paint Foam Insulation Swords

This required a lot of paint so I experimented with different paints based on how well they worked on foam vs. wood. Be very careful when you first start using them because the solvents in some of the sprays can damage foam (most of the paints from Michaels craft store didn’t have issues with damaging foam). Start on the back side of foam swords to test it out first.

It worked best to first coat with a black primer. On foam, be very careful to apply several thin layers to avoid damage. Then add a light coat of metallic black hammered paint to give a bit of an aged look. Add a light coat of bright silver paint (hammered or regular). Finally finish with a dark gray paint (pewter or hammered). Again be sure to do very light coats to avoid damage.

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Cut Foam Swords & Hilts

I took advantage of my Cricut to cut out all the swords from craft foam (total of 169 of two different sizes – 1.5″ and 3″ wide x 23.5″ long). I cut out a few hilts with foam and chipboard with my Cricut – including Longclaw (Jon Snow), Oathkeeper (Jaime & Brienne), Needle (Arya), Widow’s Wail (Joffrey), Ice (Ned Stark), and Heartsbane (Samwell).

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Glue Craft Foam Swords to Throne

Starting with the seat, glue craft foam swords with Liquid nails in rows & crisscrossing, ensuring to attach pointed ends to front base boards. Then start layering & criss-crossing up the back, arms & inner sides. Criss-cross both the left and right sides, ensuring to have some sword ends sticking from the bottom. Add a few to the back side at the beginning and some at the very end after other yardstick and foam insulation swords are added.

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Paint Throne & Attached Swords

Start by coating entire throne in black primer, being careful to add a thin coat on the foam portions. Then add a light coat of black hammered paint to give a bit of an aged look. Finally finish with silver paints (hammered and/orpewter).

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Paint Hilts & Attach Foam Hilts

Paint the hilts already attached with gold acrylic paint. Then paint foam hilts metallic gold or silver. I drew on designs with a permanent marker to some and used my Cricut to add details with vinyl to the most visible hilts on the front. With Liquid Nails, attach hilts to swords as finishing swords or at end after swords are attached (hilts in back will need to be attached after all foam insulation swords are attached). I had some spare gems left from making Joffrey’s crown, which I added to a few of the hilts. I decided to add some gold painted balls to the top of the large hilts (drew on a few designs with permanent marker). I also added a bit of texture and design to the hilts just using a pencil.

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Create First Row of Swords from Yardsticks

Using yardsticks (14 full length and 5 partial), miter saw and sander, shape sword points. Then paint starting with a black primer, followed by silvers (hammered/pewter). For portions that will be less visible, apply less paint. Be sure to sand the numbers on the portions of the yardsticks that will be showing (I had to go back and sand after I painted and repaint because they showed through).

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Attach Yardstick Swords

Using screws, attach the 16 yardstick swords, staggering the length with the tallest in the middle. I had a couple short sticks that I inserted in a few spots in back and the front two sides.

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Attach Foam Insulation Swords

With Liquid Nails, attach full & partial foam swords around the front and sides. Then using Liquid Nails and Duck tape, attach the 7 large foam swords behind the yardstick swords (use small pieces of yardsticks as spacers). Then inbetween the large swords, attach medium and small swords to fill out (I had extra materials so decided to add these extras but you could probably get by with just the 7 large swords). Be sure to stagger the heights of the swords so the middle one is the tallest and ends are shortest. At the very end, attach any remaining hilts and extra insulation or regular foam swords in back and along sides.

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Sword count: 169 craft foam swords + 41 insulated foam swords (7 large double-sided, 13 large single-sided, 5 medium, 6 small, 4 half swords for front, 6 partial swords mounted to chair) + 35 yardstick swords = 245 total

Make a Platform

Since we were having a GoT premiere party, we thought a platform would work great so Scott could sit on his throne and still see the show. Plus, what king shouldn’t hover over his subjects 🙂

Pre-paint the visible boards black if assembling inside. Then screw together the outer boards and supports. Finish by nailing on the top. Dimensions: 48″x88″ (see Scott’s design below).

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Display & Sit Upon the Throne

The final step is to mount the throne on the platform and have the king take his rightful place on the Iron Throne. Steep competition from Daenerys and Frito #ForTheThrone!

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