An antique carousel is again ready for riders at the Southeast Alaska State Fair after a major mechanical repair.
The ride’s main bearing finally gave out last year, after a period of time when the ride was only run for an hour at a time to extend its life.
Jim Jurgeleit, who along with his brother Larry Jurgeleit took the lead on setting the fair’s rides up this year, said a local guy, Mike Bell, machined a new bearing for it.
Bell said it was his first time manufacturing something for an antique carousel, though he’s done projects on tug boats, for newspapers, and on mining equipment before. He said he used a type of hydrophobic nylon to create the piece.
“The nylon that I used isn’t made in the U.S.,” he said. “So they went to the factory and had them cast me a piece that was of the dimensions that I needed so that I could machine it.”
But replacing it was an undertaking.
“That required a total disassembly on the whole thing last fall, and then of course reassembly this spring to put it back together,” Jim Jurgeleit said. “So it was a pretty huge project.”
It’s the latest project in a decades-long effort to keep the wooden carousel well-maintained and running.
The carousel was either purchased from or donated by the Juneau Kiwanis Club in the 1970s and at the time was one of about 150 working in the U.S, according to Chilkat Valley News archives from 1998.
It was built in 1930 by Allan Herschell and has 30 jumping horses and 2 chariots according to carousels.org. Its unique horses are half metal, half wood and were made by Herschell Spillman, a noted carver of carousels between 1926 and 1935.
“They’ve had kind of a rough life,” said Teri Bastable-Podsiki who headed up the Preserve Alaska’s Antique Carousel committee which spearheaded an effort to getting them restored.
“A group was thinking they were doing a good thing and they sandblasted them and covered them in boat bondo and then painted them. So it took a lot to get them back,” she said. “It was $2,000 back then to be restored. I got five of them. So $10,000 worth.”
A few years ago Podsiki said another group came in and painted some of the non-restored horses to refresh them. She said she’d like it if another group got together to fully restore the remaining horses.
“Everyone loves a carousel ride,” she said. “If you think about how many adults and children have ridden that over the year — at some point, if anyone ever has a soft spot for a carousel and wants to make a donation to the board, I’m sure they’d welcome it.”
Jim Jurgeleit said despite its age, it is relatively simple to maintain.
“There are still quite a few parts available for it,” he said. “It seems to hold up really well. It doesn’t get run for many hours a year.”
Generally that means greasing the mechanical parts and doing some maintenance on the wood each year.
“It’s really not too time consuming,” he said.
In addition to the carousel rebuild, the Jurgeleits also set up the Ferris wheel. Jim Jurgeleit, who has been involved in setting up the rides for about 10 years, said that was a relatively simple project of putting the carts on it.
The complexity of the Ferris wheel comes in operating it.
“The big thing on that particular kind of Ferris wheel is you have to keep it balanced,” he said. “If you get it out of balance then it has issues. So what we kind of do is – not put a lot of people on it. We space people.”
Jurgeleit said in the years he has been operating it, he’s never had to deal with an issue.
But in 2017, Ferris wheel passengers took a wild ride after the hydraulic system malfunctioned, sending it spinning backwards at a high speed. Rescuers halted the wheel by hand and lowered it to let riders off; no one was injured. The ride was back up and running within a few days.
Anyone interested in learning how to operate the rides can volunteer and get trained, Jim Jurgeleit said. The fair is still looking for volunteers.