In January of 1996, I designed and created a 6 ft. Scottish Terrier for Glasgow High School in Glasgow, Montana. Why a scottie dog? Needless to say Glasgow is a Scottish town in the high plains and badlands of Montana. I've visited there as an artist in residence the past 4 years working with teachers and the school and have made some life-long friends in the community. Community leaders approached me about creating a Scotty Dog Sculpture for the school as the high school mascot was --the Fightin' Scotty. My response was "a 6 ft. Scottie Dog?! Well, heck why not. Sure, I can do that." Meanwhile, my mind is clicking on how am I going to create this dog as I still had a pretty small shop and with their small budget. I would need to get this dog finished in a seven day period.

I requested the help of Ken Hambel, a master smith and good friend in Colorado. He had the ability, the spacious shop, a bigger and faster power hammer, and is crazy enough to believe me when l said we could make it in a week. We had worked together before and won the NOMA Top Award for Metal Sculpture. Ken has now won every metal category award they offer and he deserved each one.

He's usually racing against time to get things done, as he like myself, has work that was always due yesterday. It was important to us both to get this done well and out of the shop for other work coming in. I'd learned the hard way the year before on another pro)ect that to let work linger around the shop unfinished was a bad idea as it soon began to cost you money.

I drew the dog in chalk to scale on the floor of his shop and by the end of the first day we had a 2" channel iron armature and had begun to forge "fur."

2" x 3/16 flat bar was used for the draping fur. We tapered each end of 6 ft. lengths of flat bar with the air hammer. With Ken's help I bent and welded the pieces on to the armature--often crawling inside the dog to wold them in place. Yikes, that was an experience. I changed the size of the flat bar for the fur on the head of the dog to 1" so that I could get a finer detail. The ears were cut out of 3/16" plate and forged into a 3-d ear. A double scroll created from 1/4" thick, tapered 1" bar made the nose.

The tail was the most clever--I was struggling with the idea of what material would work best and quickest to make the tail fill out and still look feathery. I had begun to weld on some 1/2 inch flat bar but it soon proved disappointing to my eye. Ken came up with angle iron bent on its spine in a horseshoe shape around the armature tail with the ends pinched tightly together to give a thin line edge. We graduated each length shorter loops on shorter loops till we got to the tip of the tail. I have witnessed the creative application of angle iron many times by other smiths and again, angle iron was the elegant solution. Never take angle iron for granted. ( You may have seen those candle holders by Dnrothy Stiegler done with angle iron and the creative fence picks using angle iron demonstrated at ABANA conferences) The tool I found indispensable to this project was a bending fork. You can make one to fit any size of steel and you have amazing leverage and control of bends and curves you wish to create.

We paced our days carefully, with 8:30 starts, coffee breaks and lunch. We quit at 4:30 for dinner. (As the fellows at Discount Steel say "Beer-thirty"). We never wasted a minute of the day, and stayed in the "sane lane" all the time. Ken's shop is in the wild west near Grand Junction and I saw some mighty pretty sunsets from their doorway.

Well, by the morning of the fourth day I was putting the details of toes, eyes and nose and " fussy details around the face" and the evening of the fourth day we celebrated the finish. We guessed the weight around 375 Ibs. Ken then told me he had had some reservations that we would be able to do it and felt pretty nervous. I'm glad I didn't know that. As Ken sprawled on his couch, I checked the answering service back in Minnesota where as crazy and true as I can tell it now, someone was calling asking about creating a IO ft. Grizzly Bear in steel. Ken thought I was lying, but his loyal blacksmithing heart rose to the occasion and said: "Just make sure we get to have 2 weeks for that one."

I discovered that two people working together can accomplish a lot in a short time with a good work plan. About a month before the project began,we had spent half a day planning everything we needed to do and accomplish to get the work done in a week. I had made a cardboard model and we had discussed all the aspects of the 5cotty Dog's appearance and forged a few sample pieces to see how the fur could be described. That morning of planning made all the difference. I believe someone in the Guild had written an article about "Plan your Work, and Work you Plan." A golden rule for success on any project.

The sculpture was trucked up to Montana in the spring of 1996, sandblasted and painted with a fine epoxy and installed in time for May graduation at the high school. A "Tartan" garden was planted around the raised platform on which the sculpture stands.