how do you keep neighbours friendly with noisy power tools?

Move?

Respect for your neighbors is always good advice. That being said you should have the freedom to pursue your hobby at reasonable hours. Do you belong to a homeowners association that can enforce such a rule? If not, then see if you can work it out with whomever sent the note. Was the note signed? If not then post a note on your letter box that says you are open to discuss your hobby and it's repercussions on the neighborhood with anyone willing to do likewise.

Save the noisy tool work for mid day on weekends. Learn to use hand tools such as spoke shaves and scrapers. Much more enjoyment that way anyway IMHO.

It would be helpful to know more about your specific situation. My neighbors don't bitch at me too much because I am the guy they always come to for fix it stuff and they don't want to tick me off.

Greg N

 

well, turn their anality (is that even a word?) on them. tell them they aren't allowed to add sections to their houses, or install fences, or throw parties, and also make the point that most residential noise laws only come into effect with greater than 120 decibels, and only after nine pm on anything quieter.

 

not the right approach IMO, that's the correct way to start a very uncomfortable relationship with people you will have to see everyday until you move eventually. You have to walk the line, I find neighbors more accommodating when you just let them know what you are doing. It is called living in society after all

 

Your right to swing your fist in the air ends at the tip of my nose. Good advice for "them" as well as my/yourself.

Greg N

 

KNowing you you'll give them a nice reasoned argument, a Mikey trademark grin and it'll all be ok

(better be, after the prototype the next bass on the list is mine!!)

If not, I've just persuaded my gf's dad to let me use his workshop for my speaker cab antics, you'd have to move 250 miles south but it would be fun!

 

Make them something once in a while with your power tools.

 

as soon as someone starts making my mortgage payments for me, they are more than welcome to tell me what i can and can not do with my free time on my property. until then, everyone can mind their own business.

 

Exactly. Is this "neighborhood watch" thing a UK thing (all ours does here is keep an eye out for moustached men in cargo vans) where they enforce these "rules"?

If you signed a neighborhood contract then you are kind stuck. If you did not I'd politely tell them to "sod off".

 

Neighbors are great today, aren't they? 25 years ago, they used to watch out for you, everybody knew everybody's kids, they'd get your mail when you were away, the kids cut the neighbors lawns....

When our oldest graduated from high school 3 years ago, we put a fire pit in the backyard so the kids could roast some marshmallows and hotdogs when all the grad parties were done. They were here all of her senior year since they were all in the high school musical and we're the closest "cast member" house to the high school.

The fire pit is 5 feet away from our house, and the garden hose is right there in case anything happens.

So what do our "neighbors" do? Call the police. They're afraid burning embers will travel on to their propery and set their porch awing on fire, and since their windows are open on a cool summer evening, smoke is getting into the house which isn't good for their lungs. The officer says we're within regulations and code, but it's a disturbing the peace call, so we have to stop.

Just like when my musician friends come over and we play in the basement. I remember getting the police called on me when I was 15 - still happens when I'm 48.

Yet, in our former house, a bar moved into our zoned residential neighborhood - IN OUR BACKYARD (yes, there had to be a payoff involved) - and we had no recourse against the bass pounding music that came from it on Friday and Saturday nights...EVERY Friday and Saturday nights. So we moved. We thought our new neighbors would be a little more neighborly.

When MisterRogers died, so did the concept of "neighbor" - now it's "the idiot next door."

As for your bass building, find a friend that has an empty vented garage in a zoned commercial area and move your shop there. Work on it at night after the stores around it close.

Or move to a place where your closest neighbor is 2 miles down the road. Mike Tobias did; Mike Adler did; I'm sure Ken Smith did too.

Z

 

That is you to a T!

As for the build diary, bring it on. (Assuming the neighbours let you)....

 

work inside your house . . . wait I only did that when I was single
yeah you should work inside house

 

I work in my garage.

 

I work in my basement sometimes in my living room but don't tell my wife

 

Good luck I have been very lucky so far. We live on 2.5 acres but sound travels pretty well I don't start making noise until 8:00 in the morning and shut down at 10:00 at the latest and only rarely have the doors open in the workshop while working.