Robot Frankenstein assemblage from thrifted junk

Lisa Cestkowski

6 years ago

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.