Noise early on a sunday, and why we cannot make silent tools

Cutting / drilling by hand can be much quieter and 'of course' how everything was done for most of the existence of man.

Cheers, T i m

A tiny bit like calling the pot black with your wish that all vehicles should have an annoying reversing beep sound. Around my way delivery trucks with these anti-social devices don't start disturbing local residents as late as 8am, but more like 5am to 6am.

The unwritten rule around my way suggests the 8am is acceptable for creating some noise with DIY or building work. At this time of year you have to make maximum use of the day when it is comfortable to work.

Why is Sunday any different to any other day? These days Sunday is a working day for a growing percentage of the population.

I've used a silent power saw. The moment the blade touches the wood the silence is all over.

I do wish for silent tools at times, but they'd be bigger, heavier & more expensive. So whether I'd really buy them I dunno. The silent pillar drill is nice but would be a b-tch to hold up to a wall.

NT

Well, not for where we live, its the one day they get off from minding grandchildren and having to work due to rising cost of living.

Brian

I'm sorry but you cannot compare very brief sounds from electric cars and reversing lorries with long and sustained use of angle grinders, electric saws and hammer drills. One is transient and the other incessant. You are probably one of those people who think all blind people should stay indoors out of sight unless guided by another human, as a number of certain ethnic groups seem to do.. I'm afraid the world has moved onto a more inclusive way of thinking unless you are called Donald Trump that is, in which case the world should all bend as he imagines it should be! No wonder they call him the Fool On the Hill but I doubt even Paul McCartney envisaged such a dipstick on capital Hill. Brian

Yes but these are still just variants of the standard device. With all the talk of weapons back in the 70s, I'd have thought we might have cracked using them for cutting by now. Having read stuff since I posted this it seems one of the problems is keeping the beam focussed when the air around it heats up due to the dust in it causing turbulence, thus in the main the cutter haves to be very close indeed to the object being cut. They do work well in a vacuum though, so I guess DIY in space might use them, but of course there would be little sound from anything up there! In space nobody can hear you drill?

Brian

Putting in a kitchen is "more transient" that electric vehicles beeping. It's a once in ten years job.

Lasers will never be used for cutting anything but metal And thin metal at that.

Get some earplugs/defenders if you're so concerned.

To be fair, the tradesman sawing wood on a Sunday morning is also transient, albeit it on a different scale; what I mean is, I?m sure it?s not a weekly occurrence, right? That the tradesman is working on a Sunday suggests that he?s got bags of work on and that was the best opportunity to slot that person?s job in to. It?s not the end of the world, just people going about their lives and making some racket for a few hours. The neighbours will get plenty of lay ins the rest of the year.

Reversing bleepers are fine on vehicles that only reverse occasionally or for short distances.

We lived for over a year in a cottage (my parents' holiday cottage) opposite a farm. When they were clearing the muck yard or moving the piles of silage in the silage clamp, the JCBs were going backwards and forwards all day long - and, to quote our next door neighbours "those bloody things spend more time going backwards than forwards". And to begin with, the bleep was hard-wired into reverse gear. Eventually it became less of a problem, so they probably managed to turn down the volume or disable it while they were within the confines of the yard where all the farm workers knew to look out.

It's a fine balance with warning systems like that between being safe and being a confounded nuisance to everyone in earshot.

The other appliance that no-one has mentioned so far is the 2-stroke engine used in chainsaws. If it was a constant tone (like a lawn mower), it would be easier for the brain to filter it out, but a constant rising and falling, intermittent noise is far more irritating.

It's the same as planes flying overhead. Light aircraft, helicopters and military jets can be intrusive but usually only for a short time while they pass over - military jets are very loud but only for a few seconds. But the one that really annoyed everyone was the plane that used to practice aerobatic manoeuvres over our village (possibly because it was nice scenery), so there was a constant rise and fall of the engine for a couple of hours as it climbed (engine working hard) and then dived (engine screaming away as airflow past the propeller turned the engine). That went on for a couple of years and no-one managed to see its registration number to complain.

Or a high pressure water jet cutter?

Saw one on telly last night - it was cutting cakes in a cruise ship bakery.

Owain

It happens that Brian Gaff formulated :

Water jet cutting works well for some materials, but involves very high pressures.

"Harry Bloomfield"; "Esq." snipped-for-privacy@NOSPAM.tiscali.co.uk> wrote in message news:qhmbnk$1e7$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me...

And hence, presumably, a noisy compressor.

There used to be a railway ballast depot near where I worked, and the loaders all had reversing alarms fitted. The nearby residents were clearly unimpressed, and eventually the alarms were silenced, and replaced with flashing warning lights.

Meanwhile back at home, when outdoors, the vehicles at the quarry were still audible. :-(

Chris

NY was thinking very hard :

Yes, but the compressor need not be where you are actually working.

Not when equipped to EVERY vehicle as now proposed.

And that is exactly what's going to happen in all our towns. Every time someone reverses into a parking space either on the roadside, car park or driveway.

How many times per year are you annoyed by angle grinders, electric saws and hammer drills?

How many times every day will the rest of us be annoyed when all cars are fitted with reversing beepers? At the moment it tends to only be the delivery lorries fitted with beepers but give it a few years it will be all day with cars reversing in the car parks and road side to use the same shops.