Muffler for shop vac

[Joe Trotter]

I have an older craftsman 16 gallon, 6 HP shop vacuum that has an ear piercing sound to it. My vacuum is in good shape and has impressive suction but the sound is way too loud. I hate to replace it if it can be sileneced somewhat.

I have seen a muffler made for central house vacuum's that appears to be made from an innner and outer pvc pipe. The inner pipe has holes drilled in it and is wrapped with fiberglass insulation. It is then inserted into the outer pipe. It looks similar to a glasspack muffler design.

I am unable to find information on how many decibels the muffler would drop the overall "noise". Has anyone here tried a muffler of this style?

Otherwise I may buy the Rigid WD1450 due to the many positive comments I have read about it.

Thanks, Joe

[Bruce Page]

Sears used to, maybe still do, sell a muffler for their vacs. It helped my old vac a little but I still couldn't wait for it to die. When it did I bought a Fien

[Bill Huber]

I have a muffler that I took off my Ridgid shop vac you can have if you want it. I exhaust my shop vac out the side of my shop so I don't need it.

I just fits in the exhaust hole of the vac, it does help some.

If you want it PM me with and address and I will mail it to you.

[Lee Koepke]

several years ago there was an article in Shop Notes on how to build one like you described.

Its on my 'list'.

I got a newer shop vac now, so its not as urgent as before for me

[glenn bradley]

I have the one Bill is offering. Sometimes I use it, sometimes I don't. It helps a little, little bit. As a side note, I always wear hearing protection when running the vac. I survived rock an roll and I plan to survive wood working with my ears intact ;-)

[Eric Brown]

Don't remember which magazine (in the last year or two) but they had a project where they put the shopvac into a wood box with a baffle chamber and filters from a furnace. They implied that the sound was cut considerably. If interested, I'll try to find the article.
Eric

[Paul Kinneberg]

I used one for years prior to getting my Festool I thought it definately helped and worth the price but is it as quiet as the Festool not even close.

[Ray Schafer]

I think the article was in FWW ... just a couple of months ago. I think I made a copy from the library that I may have lying around somewhere. They made a box with sound-board to muffle the sound. I never made it but may adapt it to my compressor instead.

[jerry nazard]

Put it in a box. The muffler does not cut the noise level by much and it considerably reduces the suction of the vac.

[Greg Cole]

I'd either make an enclosure for it or send it the way of the 8 track and upgrade. The Fein and Festool vacs aren't exactly cheap, but you'll use it more, like it more, eat less dust from them with the MUCH better filtration.... etc etc etc.
The noise from my shop vac and a ROS drove me nuts & shoved me down the Neander slope for final surface prep. And now I've treaded on the Festool slope, a CT vac is in the cards "one of these days".

[Andrew Joiner]

A simple fix might be to wear ear plugs or Music head phones.

[Mark Engel]

I have probably the same Craftsman shop vac, 16 gallon, 6.25 (yeah, right) hp. The top is removable to use as a leaf blower. Got the Sears muffler for it. It lowers the tone of the exhaust note, but it is still way loud. I just wear my hearing protection when using the vac.

[Steve Leverich]

Here's a link

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=75593

Just googled (on SMC) "shop vac box", it was the second one on the page. (Wouldn't have had to do that if I'd SAVED that link like I THOUGHT I had .... Steve

[Myk Rian]

Put it in a box. The muffler does not cut the noise level by much and it considerably reduces the suction of the vac.

I'll second that.

[Shawn Christ]

I too have a screamin' 16-gallon Craftsman, bought new around 2002. It performs well for me, really no need to upgrade. I tried the Craftsman brand "muffler", but it didn't seem to help much for the price tag. I still needed ear protection, so I returned it to the mall BORG.

I saw this plan for a muffler box in an issue of Family Handyman a few years back. It looks similar to the FWW box in the other thread. The build instructions are fairly detailed. They suggest carpet as the sound-deadening material. It is shop tip #2 at this link:

http://www.rd.com/familyhandyman/content/17685/

4 other small shop tips are included. Also note that Family Handyman has a free searchable index for all of their printed articles from the last several years. I think this is a relatively unknown resource.