Paul Short dresses for safety when using his Brutal Blaster.

In Newfoundland, near the easternmost point of North America, Paul Short established an automotive repair shop 11 years ago. Short has made a living out of automotive repair, an avocation out of welding, and a way of life out of resourcefulness.

Paul once worked at an automotive dealership, but left that to set up his own business with his wife Cathy. He is proud that their business — Specialty Repairs — has outlasted the five-year drop off point for small business survival and has grown to include general service work on government vehicle fleets. Over the years, Short acquired a wide range of equipment, including milling machines, plasma cutters, and MIG and TIG welding outfits. And, about 15 years ago, he made his own pressure sand blaster.

"I created my own blaster — I call it Brutal Blaster — because everything out there in the market was what I call slight, meaning less than industrial quality," says Short. "Some of the blasters I saw had some good qualities, but they also had weaknesses," he explains. He knew he would never find exactly what he wanted, so he built his own.

Short's blaster is large. He made it big to avoid having to constantly reload the blasting media for the large jobs he sometimes undertakes. Small blasters are inefficient for large jobs because you have to take off your safety clothes to reload, he explains. To get the size blaster he wanted, Short used an old 60 gallon propane tank.

After making sure the propane was properly vented from the tank, Short cut the top off and inverted it to create a concave feeding trough that can hold 200 pounds of silica sand. He added two valves that allow him to adjust the amount of sand coming out of the tank, and installed a sandblasting hose and a nozzle. Then he set the contraption on wheels.

"I plugged it in and it worked," he says. "It was a simple item to manufacture, though there are some tricks in order to get it to work properly," Short says, adding, "I learned them the hard way."

One of the tricks is to have a valve on the side, so you can vent the air in the tank. Short says that venting may not seem like much, but an air adjustment valve allows you to reduce the air pressure when blasting thin material. Too much pressure and the sand will blast through the metal, he explains.

Short has used his blaster to recondition gas pumps and such items as a soda fountain and a couch.