On a chilly spring morning in downtown Spruce Pine, North Carolina, a town of around 2,400 in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a double line of tents stood parallel to the railroad tracks, filled with people working at forges and anvils. The air reverberated with the hiss of gas forges and the rhythmic clanging of hammers striking metal. This was the 2025 Fire on the Mountain festival, an annual celebration of the art of blacksmithing.
Standing under one of the tents was Scotty Utz, a blacksmith with the organization RAWtools South.“As my son says, blacksmithing is boring,” said Utz. “It’s just tap, tap, tap all the time.”
But Utz is anything but boring. A natural teacher, he hammered a cooling piece of metal around the tip of an anvil, and explained his process to the crowd. “I’ve got this lengthened out about as much as I want it. I was just stretching it out a little bit using the horn and the peen,” Utz said.
On a nearby table was a display of jewelry and garden tools, all made from parts of discarded guns. Standing behind the table was Stan Wilson, a pastor and the coordinator of RAWtools South, which is based in nearby Asheville…