Dennis starts restoration on his 1940 Ford convertible, realizes the need for plastic knobs and convinces an antique car friend into developing tooling for making them.

In this photo, Dennis' son Daniel stands beside his dad's disassembled Ford

Dennis takes extra dash knobs that he made to the Hershey AACA car show and sells out.

Realizing that he is able to support his hobby, he continues to develop all dash knobs for 1932-48 Fords.

Dennis takes out a 2nd mortgage on his house and buys a bigger injection molding machine for making better quality knobs in larger quantities.

He moves his part time business from home into a rented vacant railroad depot.

Dennis realizes that the weatherstripping and seals he purchased for his 1940 had hardened, cracked, and needed replacement after 6 months.

He is determined to make premium quality weatherstripping for his 1940. Due to minimum production requirements, he starts selling the extras.

Sales of his quality dash knobs and seals takes off, so he quits his full time job as a purchaser at a local textile plant.

He buys a 5,000 sq. ft. building on Hwy 29 in Concord, NC. which is still located in the front of the business today.

Dennis builds a 10,000 sq. ft. building next to the first one and remembers thinking that he was set for life as far as buildings go.

Little did he know that it would eventually grow to be over 300,000 sq. ft.

Dennis buys more plastic injection machines and develops more plastic parts.

He also starts making Cushman Motor Scooter parts in an effort to keep his employees busy in a bad economy.

The Original Ford Tooling program becomes official. We buy bigger machines and build more buildings to take in these large tools and run them.

Ford traditionally scraps tools they are finished with. We are honored to save these tools from scrap for continued use,so we can make products for all the restorers out there that need them.

Daniel Carpenter purchases the company from Dennis on a payment plan.

Dennis is now able to focus on his core strength of developing new products and working with the tool makers.

The economic downturn forces us to cut back and examine our ways but not one of our employees is laid off during the whole downturn

We are able to purchase some much needed equipment such as a digitizer and CNC machines at bargain prices from companies that were going out of business during this time

We launch our all new user friendly web store and introduce flat rate shipping to better serve our customers.

Dennis still works at the business everyday and enjoys every bit of it. Also, those knobs and weatherstripping he put on his 1940 convertible back in the 1970s are still good to this day.