Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention, And Sometimes Mom Is Smarter Than All Get Out

Between a lot of activities in the shop and around the homestead, I use a lot of disposable ear plugs for sound reduction.  Recently I was getting ready to fire up some machine or the other and simply could not find my cannister of disposable ear plugs.  No where.  They had simply been beamed up by aliens or something.  Admittedly I’ve been doing a lot of reorganizing and cleaning lately, but these are not something I would have put is an obscured location.

While not exactly desperate, I looked around to see what could be used as a sufficient substitute.  Sure, I had cotton wadding in my finishing kit but that is not really an effective sound stopper, and yes I could use ear muff sound reducers which I also use regularly.  Then something in my hardware store under the stairs caught my eye and the light went off.  I tried it and quite simply it may have yielded the best ear plugs I have ever used.

Most earplugs do not fit my ears snugly, no matter how much I twist the rounded tips or shove them into my ears they always seem to fall out fairly soon after inserting.  I have a little better luck if I turn them around the wrong way and insert the larger butt end of the plug, at least they stay put, but they still do not provide the hearing protection I used to get from the green hexagonal plugs from days gone by, the kind I have not been able to find for many years.

But these new ones?  They fit my ears better than any others I have ever tried, and their sound reduction is at least as good.

So what were these new magic ear plugs?  You can see in the picture.  I took a coil of  1/2″ foam polypropylene caulking backer, snipped off a 3/4″ piece from the end, compressed it and stuck it in.  Like I said the fit was the best ever and the sound reduction truly excellent.  These are now my “go to” ear plugs, period.

And the missing cannister of ear plugs?  In the locked gun cabinet, left there after my last practice session.

D’oh.