KOMO has a story this week that is starting to gain national attention: Thurston County’s Colin Macduff of Olympia-based RCM Enterprise invented an effective and low-cost prosthetic finger using his in-home bike shop and a bit of ingenuity.

Macduff lost his finger in an explosives accident in 2010. Now, his invention is attracting others with a similar amputation who come to him for a custom bike-inspired finger.

From KOMO:

“At three in the morning he woke me up and said, ‘I’m going to make me a finger out of bicycle parts.’ And I just smiled and said, ‘You’ve had too much medication ,you should go back to sleep,’” Becky said.

Back home, Macduff emerged from his shop one day with an odd looking contraption made using pieces of a bike’s handlebars. It took him eight hours of cutting, grinding and welding to get the first bio-mechanical finger.

“It’s not designed to make a tight fist, it’s designed to grab a tool,” he said.

With just three moving parts, the design was awarded a U.S. patent and Macduff is now fitting other amputees.

“To give hope back to patient to have function again, to do their job, to do the simplest things like help grab a coffee cup,” he said.