Sculpture with a Torch was first published in 1963. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

John Rood, a sculpture and former professor of art at the University of Minnesota, provides in this book a practical, how-to-do-it discussion of the technique of welded metal sculpture. In addition to serving as an instruction manual for students and artists working with welded sculpture, the book will be helpful to art critics, connoisseurs, and others, who will gain greater insight into this kind of art by knowing something of the processes involved. In an introductory chapter the author discusses welded sculpture as an art form. In separate chapters he considers oxyacetylene welding, equipment, finishes, brazing, techniques, and arc-welding. He gives a step-by-step account of the making of a piece of welded sculpture for an architectural setting. A chapter on the making of sketches and a list of safety rules conclude the text, and there is a brief bibliography. The book is profusely illustrated with photographs showing the author's own metal sculpture, works of other artists, and tools and equipment.

John Rood is also the author of Sculpture in Wood, and his art is critically discussed and portrayed in John Rood's Sculpture by Bruno Schneider, both published by the University of Minnesota Press.