Ordinarily the practical method would have been to determine precisely where in the cliff the head was to be located, then fix the model at the same angle; next, to begin at the top, peel off the rough stone and finish as you went down. That’s the way any good mechanic or engineer would carry on such work, relieving the features, finishing as he descended and using the stone shelf that the work always left under his feet to stand on. But this was a work of art, not of mechanics. The revelation of the face by the sculptor was as if he were releasing a living thing. Each drill hole must pierce the stone with certainty, so as not in any way to injure what was below. Gutzon said he could not allow mechanical methods to reduce his art production to a lifeless form. Each day they carefully surveyed the rough-blocked face. When they reached the chin line they were thirty feet in from the original granite cliff. There they stopped and built a scaffold from chin to forehead, and the sculptor sent to Texas for his old friend and assistant Hugo Villa. It was then June and an unveiling was scheduled for July. No man on the Rushmore project had ever carved a mountain before. But no matter. He had less difficulty with them than with any other phase of the undertaking. Most of them were the so-called forgotten men of Keystone--veteran miners, the one-time workers of the idle Holy Terror Gold Mine. They were hard-rock men; they were used to explosives; and they did not need many instructions. In the end the sculptor had several experts on the mountain as adept as any in the country, and a loyal group of helpers. Gutzon established a boardinghouse near the blacksmith shop, engine room and other buildings at the foot of the cliff, and frequently came with his guests to eat with them. He knew them all. Gutzon’s original contract with the Mount Harney Memorial Association had specified that Captain Jesse Tucker of Stone Mountain be named superintendent of the work at Rushmore and given a fixed salary of $10,000. To make this sum possible the sculptor reduced the amount to be paid to himself. The reason for Tucker’s position, he frankly stated, was that he must give part of his time to other sculptural work, and that while he was absent from Rushmore he needed someone to take his place. But presently the Rushmore Commission hadn’t any money to pay to anybody. There were arguments and misunderstandings, and Tucker resigned. After that the full burden of the work fell on Gutzon. He moved with his family to the Black Hills and built a studio some distance from Rushmore at Hermosa.