The man restoring Waterbury’s beheaded Christopher Columbus statue gave News 8 an exclusive behind the scenes look at his workshop and the process Thursday. Randall Nelson has restored many statues and monuments across the country over the last 30 years. He tells News 8 he has never been involved in a project that carried so much controversy and political weight.

He’s fixing the face of the statue that was beheaded back on the 4th of July. During the vandalism, the nose was broken off. To him, he was hired to do a job and that’s his main mission — to get it done and not think about the other issues involved with it. “That’s like asking a carpenter if he’s thinking about the politics of the owner of the house he’s building,” he said.