The turning point was the 1968 custom truck restoration sitting in his bay. He needed to fabricate a set of perfectly crisp, clean rocker panels and matching floor pans. He spent an entire afternoon trying to muscle a long piece of sheet metal into a clean 90-degree corner using his trusty bench vise and a dead-blow mallet.

Arthur threw his mallet across the shop. It bounced off a tire with a dull thud .

For hours, the glow of the monitor illuminated his face as he researched his options: Giving myself a brake | GordsGarage Blog - WordPress.com

When he unclasped the wood, the metal looked less like a precision automotive part and more like a piece of crumpled aluminum foil. The bend was wavy, the edges were scuffed, and the structural integrity was shot.