Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Repairing and restoring a tired old Jerry





Dan sent me this Jerry head and asked if there were anywhere to restore it. I said I would do my best to bring Jerry back to his original condition and make him a little bit better. The first thing we had to do was re attach his eyes which had broke away from the holder. I placed the eyes back in the holder and lined them up with the eye holes by placing #6 washers underneath the eyes to even them out.I then used magic sculpt to repair the broken eye carriage. I attached a spring to theeye mechanism and connected it with a small eye hook to the side of the inside of the dummys head. This enables the control to give the eyes a full range of motion from one side to the other. The deluxe Jerry's were set up to move center to side. by connecting the spring the way I did it enables full motion.
I then built up the sides of the jaw to close the gap between the jaw and the head and repainted it to match the original paint. I repainted his head nad the whites of his eyes. The eyes were set too close to the head on these figures and cause them to scratch with the back and forth motion. I moved them out a little so this doesn't happen again.
I then reconnected his jaw with a spring instead of a rubber band and Jerry now looks like he did when he was first purchased in 1966. Hope he serves you well Dan!

4 comments:

Eric Stefani said...

What is Jerry's last name? I saw this exact head and almost bought it but wanted to find out more about him.

Steve Barry said...

Hi,

His name is Jerry Mahoney. He was a dummy back in the "60's. made famous by Paul Winchell, ventriloquist.

bablooey said...

Thanks for the restoration. Can you give me an idea of how to reconnect the mouth on the Jerry vent figure? I'd appreciate some help.

Unknown said...

How did you fix it's mouth? Where exactly does the spring go? I've tried everything and nothing seems to work. Please help.

Thanks.