It just so happens that I’ve recently finished some of my favorite Big Voodoo skull ring projects in recent memory. They all came in at about the same time and each one had different challenges. I’m going to start with Steve’s custom King Skull with gemstone eyes. This f’ker was one of the most difficult projects I’ve ever had. Fuck.
The trick was setting the stones a specific way and allowing me to do some custom carving on the inside of the shank. Usually this leaves a pretty big cavern inside the ring so my hotdog fingers (or Izzy’s in this case) can reach in there and solder the settings. Usually I cast in place and I can’t freakin’ understand why I thought I didn’t need to in this case.
Nothing beats a King Skull. It’s the king of all jawless skull rings. But these fucking stones almost beat my tired ass. The sides had some pretty awesome dimensional carving as well.
Steve, the client, was a champ. He waited patiently while my crew and I hacked and pressed and torched our way to finally getting these stones in correctly. Steve’s a happy man now and I am too. The ring is excellent.
From sleek to raw, I also finished a long-term memorial Big Voodoo ring for Rick. This was a piece for his fallen friend Asa and we did it up right.
This is raw and powerful. We batted ideas around for a while before settling on horns and a pure copper iron cross, cast and set flush into the skull’s forehead. The turquoise stones in the eyes were gifts from Asa and we left them raw.
Overall, the ring has a kind of energy that I f’king love. It looks like it was hewn from a viking axe.
This is what the Voodoo series does best. It gets that raw hand-carved look and feel into the ring, even if we trick it out with stones, custom carving, and copper features.
I also knocked out a pair of Big Voodoo’s for Pierce and his brother. I got my hands on some genuine top-grade amber and PIerce jumped at the chance to get some set into a full-jawed version of the BVD for himself and second cigar-smoking skull ring for his brother.
I was given specific instructions to make the brows distinct and get ATTITUDE into these bad boys. Custom as hell.
Pierce’s brother got a pissed-off skull with a cigar nub in its chompers. Those are lab-grown rubies in the eyes.
Pierce got the amber and we went for a kind of raised eyebrow look. It’s Clint Eastwood without the magnum.
LAST but not least, I finally finished a skull ring for Ice. Who’s Ice? He’s the cook over at one of my all-time favorite dives in Atlanta. The Highlander. This place is awesome. Great food, great beer, and not a lot of collared shirts. It’s dark, dank, and still sports a pinball cabinet. Ice cooks his ass off and his grub has made Food Network more than a couple of times. It was an honor to carve the man a custom piece.
I’m flat out tired. I’ve had so many projects coming over my desk and I’ve been at this for a while, so it’s about time for a break. I’m going to be taking November and December off. If anyone wants to put in orders before then, I need them in the next couple of days. I don’t really have time to do any gemstone work right now (except for turquoise, which is faster) so those projects will get moved to January.
I’m starting a waitlist for January projects, so email me if you have something in mind. I’m going to be restructuring my shop a bit to do a limited run of each ring. In other words, I’m probably only going to accept so many orders per year. I’m not bumping prices up, but these rings are about to get a lot more exclusive. Not trying to be a prick, you understand, but I didn’t get into this business to work all day and night either.
Got another post about the Torque coming up soon. They’ve been moving like hotcakes. Stay tuned.
Skullworks 