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"Building a Carousel for Albany, Oregon" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A Little Mechanism History
1909 Dentzel, 50 Foot, 3 Row
Our understanding is that this carousel mechanism was installed in New Jersey in 1909 and operated until 1953 when it was then stored in a barn. Around 1988, it was moved to Santa Barbara, California to the Dentzel family property. It had been donated to the National Carousel Association (see link on our home page). When the family discovered Albany was busy carving animals for a carousel, they contacted the NCA and the mechanism was donated to our effort. Carl Baker volunteered to inventory the mechanism pieces and put together an assembly drawing. That was finished in January 2004. Much as been accomplished since that time. Parts had to be identified for repair or replacement. The floor layer of parts were laid out in their approximate positions on the floor. The sweep layer were roughly assembled on the stands that hold the sweeps at the correct angle, which is about 3 feet off the floor. Stan Chrapkowski built these stands. The 24 foot center pole had a special stand assembled to hold it by Bun Doerfler, George Hackleman and Don Ballweber. The mud sills and pole braces were put up on stands also built by Stan. The center pole was disassembled and stripped of paint to ready it for inspection. The mud sills and braces were stripped of paint by Elaine and Jack. After two years of work in a warehouse in Tangent, Oregon, the mechanism had to be moved to a new location, which luckily ended up only a few blocks from the carving studio. A crew of dedicated volunteers have been hard at work to set up the mechanism. A temporary steel pole was assembled so they could stand it up in the space they had available. Although the pole is short, it is still impressive to see this 50 foot diameter mechanism taking shape. Cedar Creek Custom Lumber of Sherwood Oregon supplied the 6 replacement 24 foot long, 4x4 sweep members. We were also pleased to have the center pole braces repaired. The center pole and parts were transported to the workshop of Lon Tyler Timber Framing of Sweet Home. There they assembled the main support with the old damaged parts and then fashioned new parts out of the custom material we supplied from Parr Lumber of Albany. The temporary steel center pole allowed us to mount the bearings and gears, then hang all the rotating parts. We did this by removing 6 feet off the bottom of the steel pole design, leaving everything above that point dimensionally the same as the wooden pole. After a considerable amount of fabrication work by Eric Purkey, we got a crane in place and set the pole on its base in a mere 45 minutes. We used a scaffold next to the pole so the crown bearing could be placed on top. The crown bearing had many, many hours of work done on it by most everyone on the crew. We also had the Avon Bearing Company in Avon, Ohio refurbish the rollers and bearing plates. Eric and the crane operator watched intently as the crown bearing neared it destination and Dan and Bun were on the scaffolding guiding the crown bearing into position. Once it was bolted down, everyone relaxed and the cable was removed. A tough job well done. The crew who set this pole up are Carl Baker, Eric Purkey, Gene Jack, Dan Rucker, Dave Bentz, Rick Biernat, and Bun Doerfler. Thank you for all your hard work. It was so exciting to see the mechanism turn (by hand) with three unfinished animal on it.
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