Wayne Jankura shaving excess ice on Monday from the Bank of America Skating Center rink in Providence.

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The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

PROVIDENCE It might be amusing to test drive a Zamboni ice resurfacing machine (0-to-60 mph in . . . never), but that would be beside the point.

As Wayne Jankura, who runs the Zamboni at the Bank of America Skating Center in downtown Providence, puts it: “Anyone can drive one. Whether they can operate one, that’s the question.”

That’s because the business end of a Zamboni is not the drive train, but the 150-pound blade that is so sharp, “I’ve cut myself and not even known it,” he said.

Imagine the blade in a pencil sharpener — and magnify it to over 6 feet long, 5 inches wide and half-an-inch thick.

In a sense, a Zamboni is a giant razor, leveling the ice surface and then lathering it with a sheet of 160-degree water that freezes instantly to form a new sheet of ice. The key is in the constant adjustments being made to the blade in terms of its level and its angle; both affect the amount of ice being sliced off.

“Ice is not level most of the time and you’re adjusting the blade all the time,” Jankura said in a recent interview. He said the ice is measured in 12 strategic places using a small drill and the Zamboni then cuts it back accordingly.

He said the blade can cut as much as one-eighth of an inch off the surface of the ice, although the average is closer to a quarter of that, and the operator is constantly making adjustments to the blade according to the thickness of the ice.

“People say that’s not much,” he said. “Well, it is, with ice spread over 17,000 square feet — one-eighth of an inch is a lot of ice.”

An NHL hockey rink is 85 feet by 200 feet, or 17,000 square feet. The Bank of America rink is slightly smaller, measuring 14,000 square feet overall.

The blade is such an important part of a Zamboni that Jankura attributes 99 percent of any problems with the machines to “a dull blade,” which he said can make ripples in the ice.

Indeed, he said they change the blades every two or three days, going through an average of three a week. AccuGrind of New England delivers a new set every Friday and takes the old blades back to be resharpened. He said each blade is ground down about eight times before it can no longer be used.

“You get eight cuts on a blade before it is whittled down to about 3 inches wide,” he said.

Zambonis, which come in different sizes, are typically powered by propane, liquefied natural gas or electricity, as gasoline engines are illegal inside buildings because of the danger posed by carbon monoxide gas in the exhaust, Jankura said. The Zamboni 445 at the Fleet Center is powered by liquefied natural gas.

“It’s geared very low, running at 6-to-9 miles per hour, although it seems faster because you are in a closed space,” he said, adding, “It takes about 10 minutes to make a sheet of ice.”

Until 2005, Jankura, 64, worked at the former Providence Civic Center, now the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, and has been running Zambonis since 1992 when the Providence Bruins (formerly the Maine Mariners) moved into the Center from Portland, Maine.

As an employee of the Providence Parks Department, he left in 2005 when the Center was acquired by the Rhode Island Convention Center Authority. He now works November through March at the Bank of America rink and the rest of the year at the North Burial Ground. He and Ronnie DelleFave, 52, who also works the Zamboni in the winter and at Roger Williams Park the rest of the year, have worked together for the city since 1987.

They reckoned they have each spent some 20,000 hours behind the wheel of a Zamboni.

AT THE BEGINNING of the season, they prepare the ice by laying a thin sheet, painting it white and sealing it with a layer of clear ice on top. As the Bank of America Skating Center is an outdoor rink, the ice is constantly being affected by rain, snow and debris.

Jankura, who is Providence born and bred, said he remembers the style of leveling ice with aluminum blades pushed by two handles. Workers would brush the scrapings away and spray water over the surface, a process that was less accurate and took far longer than today’s sophisticated machines.

“That was at the old Rhode Island Auditorium when I was in my day,” he said, referring to the city’s former indoor arena at 1111 North Main St. that the Civic Center replaced in 1972.

In fact, the Rhode Island Auditorium was one of the first rinks to have a Zamboni.

Frank J. Zamboni, of Paramount, Calif., invented the resurfacing machine that bears his name using a Willys Jeep and a chain driven conveyor belt to transfer the shavings to a wooden container. The seat and steering were set back behind the machine.

ZAMBONI TOGETHER with his brother Lawrence and a cousin built Paramount Iceland in 1939 and used the rink to experiment with different resurfacing machines. He finally settled on a four-wheel drive, front-steering machine and was able to get a good sheet of ice consistently in 1949, according to the official Zamboni Web site. This original machine has been restored and is on display at Paramount Iceland.

After building about 15 experimental machines, Zamboni was issued a patent in 1953 and built 10 standardized machines in 1954, with the Rhode Island Auditorium being one of the first customers along with the Boston Garden, Boston Arena and Worcester Arena.

Today, the trade name Zamboni has become synonymous with the machine and a visit to its Web site details not only its history and line of products, but numerous items such as T-shirts, hats and model Zambonis. The only other major producer is 25-year-old ReSurfice Corp. of Elmira, Ontario, which produces the Olympia line of ice resurfacers.

Jankura said the Zamboni 445 at the Bank of America center is basically “a Ford F250 truck with a modified chassis.” He said the blade shaves the ice with the shavings being sent to a container atop the machine. Runners on either side and a squeegee at the rear keep the shavings contained until they are lifted into the container, which can hold some 125 cubic feet of ice.

Hot water from a separate tank is then released onto the ice and spread out with a rag. Jankura said the water is so hot, it freezes almost instantly — a phenomenon known as the Mpemba effect. The edge of the rink is cut by an edger, which Jankura described as a glorified lawn mower – albeit a $2,000 one.

He said apart from being scalded a time or two by the water, which is pumped into the holding tank already hot, the key is to keep the flow even. He remembered one time when a Zamboni broke down at the Dunk and the operator panicked and forgot to turn off the water, which melted a 3-foot hole in the ice.

“I can fix a 3-inch hole,” he said, “but not one 3 feet in diameter.” He said the scheduled high school hockey game had to be canceled.

Miles of pipes under the rink pump cold brine to keep the water frozen. On Monday, the reading on the $500,000 brine compressor showed the surface temperature of the ice at 20 degrees while the brine was at 14 degrees.

He said the ideal depth of the ice at the Bank of America center is just over 2 inches. This compares with one inch or so for a hockey rink, although if it is exclusively a hockey rink, he said five-eighths of an inch is ideal “as the thinner the ice, the faster the puck.”

Following last week’s snowstorm, he said the surface of the rink’s ice was about 3 inches, “which is too thick.” Early Monday morning found him dry cutting the ice to remove some of the excess and dumping the shavings into a vat of hot water in the Zamboni’s garage next to the compressor.

Perhaps no other machine operates so much in the public eye, literally doing its job in front of a captive audience. That has earned it an endearing reputation — “There’s something about a Zamboni, I don’t know what it is,” Jankura said — but it also means that when the machines break down and have to be towed, it can be a somewhat humiliating experience.

He said one night he had a vapor lock in the propane line and the machine stopped dead. “The people were going nuts,” he said. “And I had a boss going nuts, too!”

For additional information, check out:

www.providenceskating.com/

www.zamboni.com/welcome.html

www.resurfice.com/

pelsworth@projo.com