Thread: Frankenstein steampunk machine

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Well it's finally done, but I may fiddle around with it a bit more. It's a machine that will be in front of an actor in a frankenstein's monster costume. It has some green lightning stuff in a window in the front, and the lightbulbs on the top have carbon filaments that dance around. Those "balafire" flickering lightbulbs on top will illuminate the monster who will be on an upright slab behind the machine. All the flickering and green lightning makes quite a display in the dark, no matter what the monster actor ends up doing..

The brass strips and rivets are real brass. I hope these pictures do it justice

steamPUNK!!!! Nice work. Looks cool.

Looks fantastic! Great job!

Incredibly cool!

Awesome! I could have used one of those in my display last year

That is AWESOME!!!!!!

Looks great!

I'm afraid it was not super cheap to make. The green lightning is a 6" Luminglas disc, bought from Amazon (around $30)


The lightbulbs are 15 watt carbon filament "balafire" bulbs from House of Antique hardware ($14 each). There is a little magnet in the bulb which makes the filament whip around when it gets power. I bought some last year just because it was cool, unsure what to use them for because although they make a flickering light, they look so weird. Turns out that they actually create the perfect look for this prop.

http://houseofantiquehardware.com/Ba...10KC_d_FLICKER

The light sockets are some ceramic ones from the hardware store, painted black.

The brass strips are 1" wide and 2" wide and are made by K&S engineering. I get them from my local ace hardware which is pretty big and has lots of hobbyist and artist customers. I bend the 2" ones by 90 degrees to make the corners and I use the 1" ones to make the bottom and sides (which don't wrap around). Each strip is only a couple bucks but it does add up. (steampunk ain't cheap)

The rivets are brass upholstery nails, also bought at ace hardware. You drill little holes in the brass and stick in the brass nails -- usually with the help of a piece of wood as a thimble. It can be hard to get them into the wood without bending them, but with practice and gentleness you get better. I use a pushpin to make the hole in the wood first and then push the upholstery nail into the hole.

The wood itself I got lucky on. I had some pieces of old redwood which were part of some old shelves which came with my house. So I picked the pieces that looked the oldest and made those the visible parts (notice how the inside of the box is painted -- that paint was already there). I have no idea how to make it look old if it wasn't old already.

Awesome work. It's funny, when I was a kid way back in the early 80s I saw this guy at the mall drawing these pictures of pedal powered hot air balloons. I have always loved Steam Punk, just didn't know there was a name for it till a few days ago. Oopa-dee-doo-pa-dee-doo, geez.

Neat! Your hard work paid off.