Cleveland Man's Burn Injury Inspires Invention For Safer Torch Lighting

A Cleveland man who suffered third-degree burns while lighting an acetylene torch has come up with a way to prevent it from happening to anyone else.

Ideas for new inventions can spark at any time.

For Cody Guinn, that idea came during a frightening moment.

"I just thought, why in the world is there not a striker on this torch?"

As a utility man, the tool Cody worked with most wasn't necessarily designed with safety in mind.

"A lot of times, you have leaks here at the hoses. You turn it on, you've got your striker, you've got your glove on, you go up to light it, and, well, your glove is filled with acetylene, and it blows it off," Cody said.

That happened to Cody. It left him with third-degree burns, but also a desire to make the torch safer to light.

In 1992, he created a solution — a striker you could attach to the torch and light hands-free. But Cody says that once-strong sense of inspiration became a distant memory.

"I don't know, a guy gets lost, and you don't have the money, and you get pretty upset about it. So, you know, I threw it in a closet, and it stayed there all these years," Cody said.

Until recently, when Cody approached Tyler McKinney — his son-in-law — to reignite work on the project.

"He came in one day and said, 'Hey, let's make a commercial.' That's what he calls TikToks — commercials," Tyler said.

The two uploaded a video to TikTok, and positive responses flooded in, with others wanting his invention.

"It got us off our bottoms, that's for sure. We are moving and moving as fast as we can," Cody said.

So far, they have made a couple hundred of the attachments.

Cody never could have imagined his accident would turn into a way to help others.

If you have Something Good you would like to share, email us at Somethinggoodnewson6@griffin.news