Don Burciaga burnishes the restored King Kamehameha statue in Hilo. The statue is bigger than two others in Honolulu and Kohala. Associated Press

The restoration was completed Monday and scaffolding was removed the next day, said Terry Plunkett, chairman of the statue committee of the Mamalahoe region of the Kamehameha Schools Alumni Association.

The statue prematurely decayed because of inadequate adhesive that was originally put on at the Fracaro Foundry in Vicenza, Italy, according to Glenn Wharton of New York, the lead conservator on the restoration and an expert in outdoor sculpture.

The flaking gold leaf exposed the bright red primer used to protect the bronze, he said. As a result, the bare primer began to chalk and flake away, leaving the underlying bronze exposed to Hilo's harsh elements.

The undercoating was water-soluble, which allowed moisture to seep in and cause further flaking, Plunkett said.

Wharton sent samples to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and had the gold leaf analyzed at the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles. He also communicated with the foundry in Italy that made the statue.

The experts determined that the glue used to hold down the golf leaf was failing.

The problem was resolved with priming, use of a stronger glue compound, and high-quality 23-karat gilding.

The restoration was done at a cost of $30,000. The alumni group paid half that amount, and the state will pay the other half, Plunkett said.

The Mamalahoe chapter, which owns the statue, has received more than $5,000 in donations, including $300 from Hula Halau O Ishibashi of Japan during the Merrie Monarch Festival in April.

The organization also is trying to establish a $10,000 maintenance fund, Plunkett said.

The statue, although similar to those in Honolulu and Kapa'au in North Kohala on the Big Island, is not a copy, Plunkett said.

"Our statue is bigger, and the face looks different," he said. "I think it looks like President Clinton."

The statue was commissioned by the owners of the Princeville resort on Kaua'i, who planned to place it there. But Hawaiian groups objected, saying it was inappropriate because Kamehameha never conquered Kaua'i, according to Plunkett.

Princeville then gave the statue to the alumni chapter, which paid the $106,000 cost of shipping it from Kaua'i to Hilo and installing it in Wailoa Park.

The first statue of Kamehameha the Great was lost when the ship carrying it to Hawai'i sank on Nov. 15, 1880, in the Atlantic off the Falkland Islands. A replacement statue was ordered, and it was unveiled in Honolulu on Feb. 14, 1883, in front of Ali'iolani, the Judiciary Building on King Street, where it stands today.

When the original statue was recovered from the shipwreck, it was sent to Kohala, the king's birthplace, and unveiled in Kapa'au on May 7, 1883.

The Honolulu statue also is gilded, but the Kohala statue is painted. Community residents voted several years ago to continue the painting rather than have the statue gilded. Wharton also oversaw that restoration.