Hagopian said that his uncle wanted to keep a piece of the Ark, but was unable to cut into the wood using a knife or a blast of gunpowder. He adamantly rejected Fernand Navarra's claim to have found fragments of the Ark. Attempting to reconcile the two claims, Montgomery raised the possibility that the Ark was "not uniformly petrified." Hagopian, however, believed the entire structure was "absolutely petrified," and that "Almighty God would never permit the Ark to be cut and broken up."