Robot Frankenstein assemblage from thrifted junk

Happy (almost) Halloween from Robot Frankenstein.

I created him in my underground laboratory after developing a secret technique to impart life to non-living matter. Bwahaha.

In other words, I whipped him up in my basement craft room out of a bunch of thrifted junk. 🤣

Robot Frankenstein parts

Here’s what I started with:

• One small aluminum pail (head)
• One aluminum canister (body)
• One aluminum canister lid (jaw)
• Two Ikea Ekby Bjarnum shelf brackets (legs)
• Two cabinet pulls (arms)
• Miscellaneous bolts, nuts and washers
• Fiberglass screening (hair)

Making Robot Frankenstein

I got the idea to make Robot Frankenstein after I found the aluminum bucket, which, flipped upside down, looked to me like a blocky head with the spout being the nose. Then I found the canister lid that was the same diameter as the bucket, and I realized that if I stacked it under the bucket, it would create a jaw/mouth for the blocky head.

To attach the bucket head to the canister lid jaw, I drilled two holes through each …

… and bolted a hinge through the holes.

The hinge kept the two pieces connected while also allowing me access to the inside of Frank’s head during the rest of the building process.

Next, I drilled holes into the sides of the head …

… and screwed some rusty bolts into the holes.

Now would have been a good time to attach Frank’s eyes if I knew what I was going to use for them. But since I didn’t, I started working on his body.

Frankenstein’s body

I was going to use the canister as Frank’s body and two cabinet pulls for his arms. To attach the pieces together, I drilled holes into the side of the canister …

.. and screwed the pulls into place with a bolt.

Next, I drilled a hole into the bottom of the canister (or the top of Frank’s body, depending on how you look at it).

Then I ran a bolt through the hole in the canister/body and through a pre-existing hole in the lid/jaw, securing it with a nut.

You can see what Frank was looking like once his head was attached to his body in the photo below.

Making Frank mobile

To attach Frank’s torso to his legs, I drilled a couple of holes through the lid/jaw and canister/body …

… and also through the center of each of the shelf brackets/legs.

Then I placed the shelf brackets inside the canister and lined up the holes …

… running bolts through them and securing them with nuts.

With the legs attached, my little creation was really starting to look like a Robot Frankenstein.

A Frankenstein-ian face

I raided my husband’s hardware stash to find pieces to use for Frank’s eyes.

To attach them, I drilled holes into the front of Frank’s head.

Then I stacked the hardware pieces and screwed them into place.

Next, I found a sawtooth hanger to make a scar with, attaching it with tiny screws.

Here’s what his scar looked like:

Putting hair on his head

Finally, I decided Frank needed hair. After racking my brain to come up with an industrial material that would match Frank’s character, I decided on window screening.

Sadly, I didn’t have any on hand, so I had to go out to a real store (as opposed to a thrift store) and pay retail for it. Ugh. As a general rule, I try to use only secondhand materials when making junk assemblages, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

To turn the screening into hair, I traced around the top of Frank’s head onto the mesh fabric, cut out the circle I had traced, and adhered it to the bucket with matte Mod Podge.

Then I cut off a long narrow strip of the screening and clipped triangle shapes into it.

I adhered the strip around the circumference of Frank’s head with Mod Podge.

Here he is with his hair attached:

I liked how he looked, but I thought he needed a little something extra yet — like an ID badge or serial number attached to his chest. So I dug through my crafts stash until I found the leftover numbers from the hardware organizer makeover I did last summer.

I made Frank number 31 in honor of Halloween.

He’s quite a handsome fellow, isn’t he? 😎 I debated if I should paint him green, but in the end, I decided I liked him just as he was.

He’s a little bit robot, a little bit monster — and completely his own man. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

— Lisa