Joel Shenk believes his hammer is an instrument of peace.
On an October day, he repeatedly smashed it down into an anvil at Toledo Mennonite Church, where he serves as a pastor. The red-hot metal on the receiving end once had a life as a weapon.
“It becomes in a way like Play-Doh,” he said, as he loaded a rifle barrel into the roaring forge. “And you can slowly shape it into a different form.”
Right now, he’s forging the former shotgun into a gardening tool. Shenk is a part of a national movement, called RAW Tools, that takes firearms and transforms them into means for cultivation. Guns, donated from community members and from the police department, are turned into spades, hoes and mattocks…