We can rebuild him. We have the technology. Kim Nessel, above, is creating a new statue of Paul Bunyan for the Paul Bunyan Logging Camp Museum in Carson Park. The new statue – whose wooden frame is shown in the photo below – will stand 2 feet taller than the original statue.

Eau Claire’s legendary ax-toting, ox-loving lumberjack will stand even taller starting later this summer. The statue of Paul Bunyan that has greeted Carson Park visitors for decades soon will be replaced with a bigger, more durable sculpture of the fabled tree-cutter.

“It’s one of the few kinds of displays that people can interact with.” – Kim Nessel, who’s building a new Paul Bunyan statue for Carson Park

The new Paul is being crafted by Kim Nessel, the same volunteer who stepped up and repaired the current statue after it was toppled by a vandal in 2002. While Nessel extensively revamped the old Paul – filling his legs with concrete aggregate for strength and stability and cleaning out rotten wood from his innards – more than a decade later the statue is showing its age. He may look burly, but if you look closely the lumberjack’s exterior is pockmarked, exposing the yellow foam inside. More repairs could buy him a few more years, but the Paul Bunyan Logging Camp Museum’s leadership decided recently to invest in replacing the statue rather than merely repairing it.

“It’s one of the few kinds of displays that people can interact with,” Nessel says of the statue’s appeal for Chippewa Vallians and visitors. While he repaired the current statue 13 years ago, he came to realize how popular the attraction was, with tourists and locals alike stopping constantly to snap pictures of, gawk at, or even climb on the lumberjack and his companion, Babe the Blue Ox. In fact, says Diana Peterson, executive director of the museum, Paul and Babe are the most-photographed attractions in Eau Claire.

In March, Nessel began building a bigger, better Bunyan. The towering statue is being constructed in two pieces, which will be eventually be connected at the beltline. While New Paul will strongly resemble Old Paul – Nessel traced the silhouette of Old Paul as a starting point – he’ll stand at about 12½ feet, or 2 feet taller than the original. New Paul will have a frame made of marine-grade plywood covered with polyiso foam insulation. Once the foam has been properly shaped, Nessel will coat it with liquid fiberglass, followed by fiberglass mat and then paint. Once the work is finished, which Nessel hopes will be by mid-July, “This thing is gonna be solid as can be,” he concludes.

Nessel is not a professional sculptor; in fact, he’s a retired battalion chief for the Eau Claire Fire Department who now works as a technician at the Chippewa Valley Technical College Fire Safety Center. Nonetheless, he’s been working with fiberglass since he was a kid: “I would do quite a bit of damage to my dad’s snowmobile hood, and he made me fix it,” he says. He’s also an amateur woodworker and a mechanic who has dabbled in making smaller models with the same method he’s using for the statue.

Nessel is doing the work for the cost of materials, which he originally estimated at $7,000 but now things will be closer to $4,000. “It’s a give-back-to-the-community kind of thing,” Nessel explains of the many hours he’s devoted to the project. “The city of Eau Claire was always good to me. I enjoyed working there.”

So what will happen to Old Paul? Peterson, the logging museum director, says the retired statue will be auctioned off in August as part of the annual U.S. Open Chainsaw Sculpture Championship. The legend of the northwoods could find a home in your living room – provided you’ve got 10½-foot ceilings.