Forging Guns into Garden Tools

It takes 2,000 degrees of heat and dozens of volunteer blacksmiths

- Davis Dunavin

THE RIGHT REV. Jim Curry lights the furnace of his portable blacksmith's shop in the parking lot of Christ Episcopal Church in Guilford, Connecticut. The furnace glows orange and lets off a low roar. It'll get up to 2,000 degrees, hot enough to soften the metal of a tray of disassembled shotgun parts so they can be hammered against an anvil and remolded.

A crowd is watching, and Curry picks out a 9-year-old named Oliver to help him. "This is really magic," Curry says. "Right before your very eyes, you're gonna see Oliver transform this gun, this instrument of potential harm, into something that could never be a gun ever again. It's gonna be a trowel."

Curry lines a sawed-off portion of a shotgun barrel against the anvil and hands Oliver the hammer. Oliver swings cautiously at first, flakes of redhot metal falling around his feet. The metal shotgun barrel starts to bend. He reshapes it into a trowel you could use to plant flowers in a garden.