Quiet muffler

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Lightning Performance

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Interested in seeing a muffler that is not attached directly to the saw power head. Getting it off the saw will reduce heat and shut the mfer up milling. These loud modified or gutted factory offerings are lamb, lamb and annoyingly LOUD.

Anyone?
 
I just wear muffs.
My front exit 660 will ring your bell with muffs and plugs combined after about three hours milling. The big saw not so much. Most people don't actually mill forty minutes in every hour. I've had over four hours run time in the cut many days. I have my plan just curious to see others approach.

Muffs, noted.
 
I don't think my dual port china muffler is that loud but I haven't milled with it yet either. There might be a market for milling mufflers. Like some of the pipes on race saws.
The header part is definitely a plus but the rest is a no go. Packing a tuned pipe has been considered to cut down on the hit coming back but I have to change my timing numbers, more than likely, to compensate for what does make it back to the head with any force. Running a tuned pipe as is will burn this thing to the ground milling. Mufflers not being of the auto varieties and much much smaller with little back pressure is what I seek vs building them. Those compact diesel heater mufflers might have been tried already or some other cheapo off the shelf offering not bolted directly to the oil tank. Brackets would be fine or remotely located. I've seen nothing out there this past year. Working on an aluminum can myself with some additives inside.
 
This topic was tossed around on these forums about 10-12 years ago. A few lame suggestions were made, like running a hose from the exhaust thru to water drum but nothing much became of it. The other one was using dirt bike mufflers but that proved a PITA.

Good quality muffs (Peltors) and plugs are enough for me. ~25 years ago when I was in my early 40s, I was diagnosed with below average hearing for my age. My main problem was loss of higher frequencies which the audiologist said was typical of people who listened to too much loud music in the 1970s - that's me! I then started wearing muffs and also sometimes plugs in high noise environments. Result is when I had my hearing tested again recently, apart from those high frequencies which I will never recover my hearing is about average for my age. Its not that my hearing has improved (it can't) but that everyone elses has deteriorated more than mine.

I sometimes mill with my 441 at home which is 1mile from the City CBD - it's only short logs and for at most a couple of hours. Most of the neighbours are at work although one neighbour has started working from home and it will be interesting to see if he says anything next time I fire up.
 
There was a guy that welded a pipe on his factory muffler then took flex pipe up and over to another muffler he had mounted on his mill. It looked pretty comical but he swore it got the noise down a good bit. Can't remember where he got the second muffler from was a cylindrical muffler about 6 to 8 inches long. Wasn't that long ago, within the last year or so I would guess.
 
Buckets of water with a hose were used local for stealing white oak trees in rain storms during the storm in the middle of the night. Preferred saw must have been the monsters or a big ol Mac. Still considering it with flexible stainless steel tubing like diesel heaters use for an RV. It also has the added benefit of capturing the pollutants being emitted.

Used cycle mufflers are a pita but the parts they might provide is not.

I'm 53 now Bob and in the same boat. Been reading your postings forever but I may have missed the muffler thread being I didn't start milling till about four years ago. All that aside I have mid to upper range loses in my left ear so it's not an issue there. Summer nationals, drunk, 1980's or maybe 90 91 between the tower and those 5:50 alky rails not on rails blew up that left ear! It got a three week ringer that will never recover. Oh well that juice was worth the squeeze, trust me it was 😉. So I know how that is but my right ear is taking a pounding after several hours with only that bastard 660 front outlet. It already needs a triple outlet and I'm only running a Canadian OEM dual port with the hollow can. Same as my bucking/felling 066. Big front slot and the larger side outlet not hacked out. It's fine cutting but not milling. The damn thing boils oil off the bar studs with pure canola oil when I hit tank five hot lapping it as fast as possible. Killing two birds with one stone on this adventure, hopefully. Doing the math says my oil tank is running near 350*F. She does no wrong so I'm not planning on changing much pulling the 375 36" or the 404 40". After that it's big saw time and they are much quieter and a lower pitch once you hit a hundred CC or more. This 92cc is brutal ported.

Metal or hard rock for me the past forty plus years and plenty of crazy sound systems with my fair share of rock concerts. I'm no stranger to crazy shop noise either. Messed up my back twenty five plus years ago and tinnitus (spelling) has never quite left me. It comes and goes and this saw aggravates it with extended use especially in my right ear not pointing toward the saw. I must wear both plugs and muffs or I'm toast in about an hour. It's the pitch mostly. You can hear this thing for miles away. The pipe I had on the front cover exiting up about a foot just keeps cracking and falling off so I'm done with that also. It does knock down the pitch but not enough for me.
This topic was tossed around on these forums about 10-12 years ago. A few lame suggestions were made, like running a hose from the exhaust thru to water drum but nothing much became of it. The other one was using dirt bike mufflers but that proved a PITA.

Good quality muffs (Peltors) and plugs are enough for me. ~25 years ago when I was in my early 40s, I was diagnosed with below average hearing for my age. My main problem was loss of higher frequencies which the audiologist said was typical of people who listened to too much loud music in the 1970s - that's me! I then started wearing muffs and also sometimes plugs in high noise environments. Result is when I had my hearing tested again recently, apart from those high frequencies which I will never recover my hearing is about average for my age. Its not that my hearing has improved (it can't) but that everyone elses has deteriorated more than mine.

I sometimes mill with my 441 at home which is 1mile from the City CBD - it's only short logs and for at most a couple of hours. Most of the neighbours are at work although one neighbour has started working from home and it will be interesting to see if he says anything next time I fire up.
 
There was a guy that welded a pipe on his factory muffler then took flex pipe up and over to another muffler he had mounted on his mill. It looked pretty comical but he swore it got the noise down a good bit. Can't remember where he got the second muffler from was a cylindrical muffler about 6 to 8 inches long. Wasn't that long ago, within the last year or so I would guess.
He probably used a 90 to 110cc bicycle muffler for those conversion kits to run a gas motor. Haven't found one with a big enough system to not choke up the 660. The large quality spark tubes on dirt bikes you can rebuild are near $200 CONUS now days for a quality unit assembled with rivets. Not much else looks promising but 200+cc motorcycle mufflers so I have a 300cc muffler off a 600cc twin street bike to finish mounting on the four foot alaskan to run with my big saw. I do some jungle ripping on big stuff sometimes so having a light weight quiet muffler on the 660 saw or wrap handle would be a benefit.
 
There was a guy that welded a pipe on his factory muffler then took flex pipe up and over to another muffler he had mounted on his mill. It looked pretty comical but he swore it got the noise down a good bit. Can't remember where he got the second muffler from was a cylindrical muffler about 6 to 8 inches long. Wasn't that long ago, within the last year or so I would guess.
Try finding a link.
 
You can't lower dB beyond a certain level but what you can do is lower the tone.

Look up lo-tone or super lo-tone mufflers, they replace normal mufflers on Briggs engines. All they do is make the frequency less annoying and damaging to hearing, they take the harsher frequencies out and it smoothes it all out into a more pleasant sound.
Look up the most damaging frequencies to hearing then try to get an equiv hp muffler that is outside that hearing-damage spectrum.
You'll probably find that it's on a machine like a lawnmower or moped, you can fit a silencer like a moped but that will reduce hp so I'd avoid that. Any mods like that will reduce hp unless you match the power rating anyway but it'll need a tune after.

I've heard pre-mix aspen type fuel runs them quieter but I don't know for certain.
 
i like good running saws, but i dont like the sharpness. you hear in the bark box mufflers. i am pretty sensitive to excess noise. . i wear 33d.b. howard and leight bell shaped ear plugs almost all the time , when working in my shop. hammering a nail or grinding something. that tinnyness sound, kind of hurts . its like a ear ache and i just cant focus on what i am doing. its the same in a crowded room, you hear all these conversations and our just overwhelmed.

maybe part of it is my job, but you dont realize how much information you pick up by sound and timing, pulse and vibration and even back pressure. you feel something happening before it happens .

a factory epa saw , might run ok . but when you pull the arrestor it really runs good. and you can feel it. i wonder if you took a new muffler and flash rusted it a bit. how much of the tinny sound would disappear./

it may of been a tinman vid explaining how mufflers work on combustion. you need a pressure chamber for the volume of gas expansion and it helps pull the new fuel through. if it is to open , it doesnt quite work right,
 
i like good running saws, but i dont like the sharpness. you hear in the bark box mufflers. i am pretty sensitive to excess noise. . i wear 33d.b. howard and leight bell shaped ear plugs almost all the time , when working in my shop. hammering a nail or grinding something. that tinnyness sound, kind of hurts . its like a ear ache and i just cant focus on what i am doing. its the same in a crowded room, you hear all these conversations and our just overwhelmed.

maybe part of it is my job, but you dont realize how much information you pick up by sound and timing, pulse and vibration and even back pressure. you feel something happening before it happens .

a factory epa saw , might run ok . but when you pull the arrestor it really runs good. and you can feel it. i wonder if you took a new muffler and flash rusted it a bit. how much of the tinny sound would disappear./

it may of been a tinman vid explaining how mufflers work on combustion. you need a pressure chamber for the volume of gas expansion and it helps pull the new fuel through. if it is to open , it doesnt quite work right,
I agree with the bark box, I installed one on my ms400, but have really been considering taking it back off. Even with muffs it's very loud and tinny as you refer to it. Thinking of just buying another muffler and moding it with a different outlet.
 
None taken.
I hadn't even looked yet.

The concept is good and the head connection being solid like will takeout the exhaust connection or the header flange at the head area.
I had thought about doing something similar, but with my cousin getting a bandsaw mill, I basically stopped using the Alaskan, except for rare occasions. I've always been happy enough with the perfotmance of the 394xp not to need to mess with the muffler.
 
i like good running saws, but i dont like the sharpness. you hear in the bark box mufflers. i am pretty sensitive to excess noise. . i wear 33d.b. howard and leight bell shaped ear plugs almost all the time , when working in my shop. hammering a nail or grinding something. that tinnyness sound, kind of hurts . its like a ear ache and i just cant focus on what i am doing. its the same in a crowded room, you hear all these conversations and our just overwhelmed.

maybe part of it is my job, but you dont realize how much information you pick up by sound and timing, pulse and vibration and even back pressure. you feel something happening before it happens .

a factory epa saw , might run ok . but when you pull the arrestor it really runs good. and you can feel it. i wonder if you took a new muffler and flash rusted it a bit. how much of the tinny sound would disappear./

it may of been a tinman vid explaining how mufflers work on combustion. you need a pressure chamber for the volume of gas expansion and it helps pull the new fuel through. if it is to open , it doesnt quite work right,
The power curve changes with different exhaust, so it means when the exhaust allows more flow the saw can run at higher rpm which gives more power. In terms of quiet muffler you can only lower the tone, reducing high frequencies and making it less harsh on human ears, that is to do with expansion too as the size has to be larger to give lower tone. The rust or carbon deposit would add to that as you say, it would dissipate higher frequencies.
 
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