WTB - Acoustic Foam

[Hallbjorn]

Knowing how many people we have banging on metal around here, does anyone have any connections for cheap acoustic foam?

I was banging on my anvil last night, in the basement, and Cori (my darling wife) wasn't very appreciative of the cacophony. I figure if I put some sound deadening foam on the ceiling and hang some cheap quilted blankets in strategic places, I might be able to deaden the sound enough to keep her happy, and as an added bonus, I might not need to wear hearing protection when I'm working.

The downside is that the stereo won't be as loud; but I can just turn up the volume on that.

[Odd]

You ALWAYS need hearing protection while banging on metal.

[losthelm]

Your probibly better off just adding insulation, roxul or fiberglass should help reduce how much noise traveles through the subfloor.

How you have the anvil sucured can also reduce the volume of noise produce.
Is it a quality anvil or a cheap ASO from harbor freight?
As for your music I would use earbuds under the earmuff style hearing protection.

Intermitant high pitched sound will effect your hearing.

[Hallbjorn]

Your probably better off just adding insulation, roxul or fiberglass should help reduce how much noise travels through the sub-floor.

How you have the anvil secured can also reduce the volume of noise produce.
Is it a quality anvil or a cheap ASO from harbor freight?
As for your music I would use earbuds under the earmuff style hearing protection.

Intermitant high pitched sound will effect your hearing.

I have a relatively good anvil. It's 135lbs and has excellent bounce, but it's about 5000 years old gauging from its swayback (and the fact that the horn is COMPLETELY missing/broken off). I'd love to get a bigger and better one (I have a 165lb Peddinghaus (#9) Forged Anvil on my Christmas list if anyone has any good connections with Santa), but they're a bit pricey. I keep an eye on Craig's List when I have cash.
I do need to secure the anvil to its stump better. I was hoping to make an improved stand for it before I got into securing it really well, but then I keep hoping for a better anvil before I worry about building a better stand.

I think acoustic foam may be similar in cost to insulation, but also deaden the sounds in the basement. This would be better for me, and also reduce the chance of complaints from the neighbors. Also, having been in Al's shop (Merc Tailor), the sound deadening helped a bunch.

You ALWAYS need hearing protection while banging on metal.

Okay Mom. I have some nice noise cancelling headphones for when I go to the range.
You'd think I know better, being deaf in one ear from playing around helicopters as a kid.

[AL]

Part of your problem is vibration. The impact travels through the anvil and stump to the floor and thus to the structure. Get three 3'x3' rubber stress mats from Home Depot and stack them onto of each other and then put the stump and anvil on that. It will help greatly. Even my bench gringer can be " felt " on the second floor of my house unless its sitting on several chunks of rubber mat. I got all my accoustical foam off ebay.

[hivemind]

I just put my bench grinder + stand onto some rubber mats from Harbor Freight. Made a huge difference in noise.

[Hallbjorn]

Rubber mats, check! I'll put my bench and stump on some. Maybe the drill press too. Quilted blanket over the doorway at the bottom of the steps should help too.

May be using my buffer tonight to clean up the spring steel gauntlets I just got from the Archive. We'll see how loud that is.

[archibald]

If you use foam etc to deaden sound use a six inch gap between foam/??? and ceiling will help break up the sound waves.

[Jonathon Janusz]

Save your money and skip the acoustic foam. It really won't do anything to help solve your problem. Best it can do, and that is if you have it really (like 6"+) thick is tame high frequency ringing, flutter, or a slap echo IN the room (say above 500Hz or so). Also, to get enough in thickness/surface area coverage, you are looking at a lot more cost than insulation/fiberglass (I'm talking aurelex caliber stuff, the cheap foam-by-mail stuff is even less worth your time for this application). Lastly, and probably of greatest importance considering this is going in a metal shop environment, almost all of the cheaper foam products are not safe in regards to being a fire hazard. The inexpensive stuff (be very careful to research fire ratings and combustion properties of these products when shopping) can go up in a blazing inferno if you look at them the wrong way, fast enough to burn out a building as a total loss, and without even giving you so much as enough time to make it out alive/safely. I really wouldn't recommend putting that stuff in your home. . .

If you really want to do it right, double thickness drywall on the outside of a floating (as in not attached to the wall behind) wall framing, 2x6 studs, fiberglass insulation, and an airspace between the two walls will get you on track to pro-sound/studio caliber type stuff.

On the cheap/doesn't have to be pretty/not looking for perfection - blankets on the ceiling/walls with as much coverage as you can stand, some 1x4 pine frames encasing fiberglass batting/rockwool behind some natural-fiber canvas to keep the dust down and mount them to the walls with a few inches air gap behind (all this if you want to get a little fancy), and finish it off by buying a bunch of rolls of insulation (look like little round hay bales, go ahead and leave them in the bags), and stack them floor to ceiling in as many corners in the room as you can get to.

Funny thing about all this is that if you do it right, you will actually probably turn the stereo down instead of up - unless you totally kill the room, by eliminating room resonances you'll pick up clarity across the listening range and because everything gets clearer, you need to turn it up less to hear more. The down side being that if you crank the stereo you will hear even more (!) good stuff and can easily get the volume to levels that can cause you damage down the road if you're not careful, and not even realize it until too late (which is why the hearing protection in the shop is still a good thing; all that said, remember the goal here is to keep the sound IN the room with you, with all that entails. . .)