Whereas most modern metal work is done with CAD designs and high tech equipment, out at Newbridge Tom Miller eschews all modern aids and designs and crafts his works as he goes.

Occasionally though the brief is so specific that he has to embrace some forethought and planning, such as he had to do when Blayney Public School approached him to create the Dreamtime frog Tiddalik for the school's sensory garden.

"They have all sorts of things in the garden there and they decided that they needed a fat frog," he said. "The only criteria was that it had to be a frog, was at least one metre high and had no sharp edges. Other than that I had full creative licence."

As a craftsman who essentially crafts his items as he goes, Mr Miller said that getting started on Tiddalik was the most difficult part.

"Getting the proportions right was really difficult," he said. "To have a fat frog with little legs it was hard to know whether people would look at it and say 'that isn't a very well proportioned frog'."

Then came the structural design of the frog and decisions on whether it should be clad or not. Even once he'd started he tweaked the design right until the day came for Tiddalik to be delivered.

"Designs come a lot easier out of my head rather than trying to draw on paper," he said.

In the end Tiddalik is the outline of the greedy frog and marks the continued growth of his career as a relative newcomer to blacksmithing.

The metal fat frog wouldn't even exist if it hadn't been for the suggestion of a course in Orange that his wife Monika Altmann had heard about.

"She thought I was a bit bored so she found me something to do," he laughed. "That was a two weekend course and I liked it so much I went and did Cert III in blacksmithing / metal fabrication at Richmond TAFE."

From there Mr Miller has been banging away in his Newbridge blacksmithing business which over the past two years has really taken off.

"It's kind of reached that critical mass as word of mouth has been spreading and it just flows from there," he said.

"There are many genres in blacksmithing. You can make fire pokers, create sculptures and artistic pieces, metal fabrication and engineering which is what Tiddalik comes down to, a lot of fabrication there."