Building the Brutal Blaster

Welders are an independent breed, and if they can't buy what they need, chances are good that they'll find a way to make the tools they want do the job they have before them.

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

He once worked at an automotive dealership, but left that to start 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 plasma cutters, and MIG and TIG welding outfits. And, about 15 years ago, when he couldn't find a pressure sand blaster that was the right size for his shop, he built his own.

"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.

Short's blaster is large. He made it large to avoid having to constantly reload the blasting media for the big 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 started with an old, 60 gallon propane tank.

After making sure the propane was 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 he found 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.

Besides putting it to work in his auto repair shop, Short has used his blaster to recondition gas pumps and such items as a soda fountain and a couch.