I decided for the fun of it I would make a shield out of my barrels lid, then make a narrative of it in my scene of how the blacksmith is desperate for resources to the point that he is using anything he can find. This was quick and easy to do as all I had to model was the bolts around the shield and the leather straps on the back. I then made an alternate texture choosing a celtic symbol for power known as the Dara Knot, which is also associated with oak tress which comes round to my original concept for the barrel. I made a decal alpha in painter to apply to the barrel lid using this tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHpGMHHxM_o&t=121s&ab_channel=AdobeSubstance3D
I sculpted damage on the metal in Zbrush using the Orb brush pack, I also decided to bake a high poly onto the low to generate Ambient Occlusion maps and a curvature map. This method is used in the 3DEX modelling pipeline. This method turned out much more effective than the previous Maya AO and curvature mape generation and didnt require manual adjustments in Photoshop.
Final shield in UE4:
Since the bolts and lid are two separate models I created an Actor with two static meshes for both the barrel lid and the bolts, then lined them up, this is effective as now I can just drag the shield into the scene without having to realign the two meshes, it also centers the pivot on them for ease of use.