Dead Blow Hammer - How Quiet Are These Things?

[Luke Dupont]

If Japanese saws make too much noise you may have to take up needlework.

You would be surprised just how loud they can be... Especially rip cuts. The difficulty with ripping and Japanese saws is that if you are above your work, the teeth are actually going against the grain, and also lifting the work up and away from the saw horse or bench, resulting in a lot of very loud vibrations.

In my old apartments in the states, I was on the second floor in a wooden building, and those vibrations carried very easily down to the first floor apparently. But I was not doing anything special to insulate / decouple my work surface from the floor.

In my current place, I'm on the first floor, so this is far less of a problem. I do wonder how easy it is for vibrations from the floor to carry up to the walls though. In any case, rubber half dome feet and a bench with some mass seem to make saw vibrations, at least from smaller saws, a non issue. I haven't tried ripping any large boards to width or anything of the sort yet, though.

[Tom Bender]

Clamping the work to the bench or sawhorses can help a lot with noise and makes the sawing nicer. I think you're going for nicer more than quick.

[Mark Rainey]

Had an apartment 20 years ago and was doing hand tool woodworking. The neighbor beneath me was trouble, and constantly knocked on my door and complained to landlord. My work was not especially loud, but he found it "irksome". It really put a damper on my hobby. Got into carving, but sharpening a v-tool discourage me. Dabbled in chip carving, but because of marginal sharpening skills at the time, my knife was just not sharp enough and I became discouraged. I moved. As mentioned above, your best chance might be to see if you can communicate with your neighbors about a time you can create some noise without "irking" them. Perhaps make them an item also.

[Jason Buresh]

I would skip the bead blow completely. I use mine in the garage, not the woodshop. The point of a dead blow is not to reduce sound but to prevent the hammer from bouncing after striking.

Personally I would go with a carvers mallet. Or a cheap rubber mallet.