One day, in his father's auto body shop, he fashioned a toy cannon from a small piece of pipe and some scrap aluminum. "I used it to shoot firecrackers," he recalls with a chuckle.

Someday, the young Stafford resolved, he'd make a real cannon.

He did it, and then some.

Over the last 23 years, in his shop atop a woodsy slope in Embreeville, Chester County, he has built or restored more than 150 cannons and gun carriages.

So peerless is the quality of his work that he has earned a national reputation as the go-to guy for aficionados of Civil War-era heavy artillery.

His customers are private collectors, forts, museums and reenactors. One of his cannons is on display on the ninth floor of the Chicago Public Library. For the National Park Service he has built several carriages, including two for 14,800-pound coast artillery pieces on the James River in Virginia. Hank Williams Jr. owns one of his cannons, as do a du Pont and a Procter & Gamble mogul who wanted one to fortify his Block Island, R.I., estate.

"I build them exactly the way they were made," says Stafford, 53, a tall, sturdy man with powerful hands.

"You have to be a little bit crazy. But I feel like I'm supposed to do this. This is my destiny."

The other day, Stafford was in the final stages of assembling a three-inch ordnance rifle - a cannon to you and me - that will be installed this summer at the Cyclorama Gallery at the Gettysburg Museum of the American Civil War at Gettysburg National Military Park.

It's a replica of his favorite model, manufactured in the early 1860s by Phoenix Iron Co. in Phoenixville. Accurate in every detail, the cannon will be fully operational, capable of propelling a nine-inch, 11-pound, bullet-shaped projectile two miles.

"This is where the body-shop background comes in," Stafford said, pointing out features of the carriage - the gorgeously crafted chassis of kiln-dried white oak, painted the correct shade of olive drab, that will bear the barrel. "There are lots of parts and pieces, and they all have to be perfect."

The name of his business is Stafford Wheel & Carriage. His specialty is gun carriages and the 210-pound wooden wheels on which they roll. But he's capable of fabricating a complete cannon in dozens of different styles, ranging in price from $18,000 to $35,000. He works from arsenal specifications, copies of original plans, and drawings retrieved from the National Archives.