(gentle music)
My name is Joel Baker.
I run American Giants.
What we do is find and restore
old 1960s International Fiberglass giants.
I'm gonna walk you through how my team
restores a muffler man.
In this case, a Paul Bunyan.
Muffler men were large 20-foot advertising giants
that were made in the early '60s
by the International Fiberglass Company.
These guys were really made to bring attention
to your business.
So business owners love to buy them, set them up outside,
and it would get the family car to pull over on a road trip.
This particular muffler man was buried
in the back of an old campground in Wisconsin
that had gone out of business.
We're guessing he's around a 1964 model,
which would make him kind of one of the early ones made.
When I first discovered this guy
and got a good look at him,
I realized he had fallen over.
When they fall forward they land on their hands,
and that had pushed his shoulders out and cracked them.
Our guys hold the shoulder in place,
while another guy will screw small boards
all around the crack to hold it in place.
And when we're happy with that fit, then we screw it in,
and the next step is we go into fiberglass filler.
Once the boards are holding the shoulder in place,
for this particular crack,
then we can go on the inside of the giant
and we can lay down fresh fiberglass.
and basically connect that shoulder piece
back to the rest of the giant.
This Bunyan head had a lot of detail in the beard.
So we basically take Bondo and fiberglass resin,
and we put it into all those seams of the beard.
Once all the cracks on the giant are fixed
and all the holes are patched,
it's really the hardest part of the job,
and this is sanding.
We use orbital sanders to sand the giant,
and we go over every square inch of the giant
and remove all those layers of paint
that had added up over the years.
Once all the fiberglass repair has been done,
then it's time for the first coat of primer.
And we use a filler primer that's thick,
and it can seep into all these little pinholes
and cracks, and fill them as best it can.
The primer is sprayed onto the whole giant.
Simultaneously, while all this priming is going on,
we are also working on the feet.
The major thing wrong with this guy
was he was missing his feet.
And this is very common. We see this a lot.
When you have a business that has a muffler man
and then they want to get rid of him,
instead of unbolting the feet,
they cut the feet off at the ankles.
We have made molds of the correct feet from other giants.
We had to make new boots.
Then we find a point on the original giant's leg
that we can cut.
And we basically cut about a foot off
of the original leg at a good mating point for the new boot.
We get a good lineup on the boot, into the original leg.
And then we use wood and screws
to basically bolt that on and hold it in place.
Once we're happy with the position
and that the toes are pointing in the right direction
and everything looks good,
then we're gonna go in.
And we're gonna fiberglass the inside of those legs.
And then we'll come back,
and we'll actually prime that area again
and make sure it's a perfect fit.
And you would never know that this guy has replacement feet.
In this case,
the buyer also wanted an axe that was an original.
We didn't have an original axe, so we again,
used our molds to make an identical axe
to the original axes.
Once the axe is put together,
then we go ahead and sand it down and prime it.
In anything the giants hold,
we always drill holes in them.
That way if there are any water leaks, the water can drain.
The next step is very tedious, but it's very important.
And it's called wet sanding.
Instead of using orbital sanders,
we will use sandpaper by hand,
and we will spray the giant down, so it's all wet.
And we'll use a very fine grit of sandpaper
to go over that second coat of primer.
And this is basically getting rid of anything
in that primer paint that's you can't even see
but that is sticking up
and may make the final paint job
look not quite as smooth.
Once the wet sanding is complete
and everything looks good to us,
it's an exciting time because we need to send
all of our pieces a few miles away to a paint shop.
Once at the paint shop,
the painter is going to talk to us about what colors
we want for this giant.
It's very important that the buyer picks
out what colors that they want.
We often will recommend
that they go with the original colors
since we like everything to be original,
but it's really up to the buyer
and what paint job they want.
The first thing the painter will do
is to put on the base coats
on the shoes, the legs, the shirt, and the head.
And these are all solid colors that go on each parts.
We always use automotive-quality paint
to give us a five- to seven-year life
before you see any signs of deterioration.
Once the base coats are on the giant,
then it's time for the details.
And this is when the painter will go to work
with an airbrush and do all the fine details
of highlighting the hair, adding skin tones.
The painter will also take great care in doing the eyes
and adding a lot of eye details in the pupils.
Once all the airbrush details are complete,
then it is time for a clear coat.
And this gives it a really nice glossy shine.
And this clear coat also protects the giant
for the long term from sun
and weather and being in the elements.
Once the pieces start coming back to the shop
fully painted,
it's the time to really concentrate
on the internal structure of the giant.
A lot of the buyers want the giant to free-stand
in heavy, heavy wind.
The first thing we do is we do a cardboard cutout
of the giant's footprint
And then we take that cardboard cutout
to a machine shop, and they make us a print of that foot
that's made out of 1/4-inch steel.
Then we can weld on 4-inch pipes onto that.
And those pipes will go up the leg.
Once the pipes reach the waist,
we weld in cross bracing that connects to the waist.
It's during the process of installing the internal structure
that we also bolt the giant together.
We do a final fit of the waist and the torso.
And we also bolt on the head at this time.
A date is agreed on with the buyer
of the giant, and before we get there,
a slab has been poured at that location.
Once the giant is unwrapped on-site,
it's time to install anything that he needs
to hold in his hands.
With this Bunyan,
he held an axe, so we made sure
that all the bolts that the axe
were gonna slide onto were already in place.
So on-site, it's pretty easy
to just make sure the fit is right
and bolt the axe down before he's raised up.
At this point, a crane or a lift is brought in
to lift the giant from the trailer.
We take time at this point to make sure
that the giant is orientated properly.
We'll have the new buyer come in and look
at the giant and make sure they are 100% happy
with the way the giant is facing.
And when they are good,
we gently set the giant down on the slab,
and those foot plates that are under his feet,
they have tabs in them and those tabs have holes.
And we basically drill through those holes into the slab.
Once all the holes have been drilled,
we will insert concrete anchor bolts.
And once we tighten those bolts up,
the bolts expand underneath in the concrete
and press against the concrete
therefore locking the giant into place.
Once the giant is standing,
we like to take a step back and get some pictures
and really take the time to appreciate
all our hard work in bringing another one
of these giants back to life.
These giants up to this point have lasted
for 50 years, and we really wanna give them
another 50 years.
And now this fully restored Bunyan
stands at Cumberland Ridge Forest Products
in Elkton, Kentucky.