(Continued from Page 1)

. . . , and your hands don't work. You're scared."

His self-help effort went into a higher gear because he became friends with the owner of a neighboring business on Bee Ridge Road, Active Orthotics/Prosthetics.

Polins went to owner Dean Cleall, a board-certified prosthetics designer, looking for an existing thumb brace of some kind.

"We checked with every supplier I could find," Cleall recalled. "We could not find anything that would work in this situation. That was how this whole thing started."

Polins would go home and carve wooden thumbs using a powered hand tool. He'd show up at work on a Monday and hand over his latest thumb to Cleall, who would use it as a mold for a plastic orthotic device in the same shape.

After roughly a dozen tries, Polins had prototypes for thumb covers in two sizes.

Polins claims that as soon as he wore his thumb covers to work, he knew he had something good.

"It takes minimal effort," he said. "I can't imagine not using it."

His new goals: moving the device into mass production while landing a patent from the U.S. Patent Office.

"Months go by when you're doing this," Polins said.

He eventually discovered he was talking boat talk with a guy at the gym who has a strong national reputation in the patent field: attorney Charles Prescott.

Prescott's career has included many ground-breaking patents, including the utility patents on the Hoveround mobility vehicle.

"With Charles, we were just talking about boats," Polins said. "I mentioned my problem with the patent search, and he said, 'You know, I'm a patent attorney. Just send the papers over to me and I'll have a look.'"

"It is now patent pending," Prescott said. "I think it is a good idea."

Trying to move from prototype to mass production was not easy, either.

After a couple of false leads, the FedEx delivery man steered Polins to a Sarasota mold maker, who in turn steered him to Alan Taylor, owner of Pro Design Solutions in Manatee County.

"We received kind of a prosthetic prototype ... for both a male and a female Thumbsaver," Taylor said. With those as a starting point, Taylor used his own design software and equipment to create three-dimensional working drawings and specifications on a computer disk.

He also knew a good factory in Taiwan where Polins could get steel molds made and then have his product injection-molded.

For now, Polins hopes the two sizes

<< back | next page >>