When I set up my Cyclone, I had no idea how loud it would be. I decided to make my own muffler, using a pair of five-gallon buckets and some scraps I had lying around in my shop. The collector’s performance didn’t change, but the muffler cut down the noise level so that I could find and fix the leaks in my ductwork by listening for the hisses of air at the fittings.
To make the muffler, I used a jigsaw to remove the bottoms from both buckets and then attached them, bottom to bottom, with foil tape. Next, I sliced an old foam camping mattress into 5"-wide strips on my bandsaw and glued the strips to the inside of the buckets with spray adhesive, leaving an 8"-diameter hole in the middle for air movement. To mount the muffler to a plywood base, I drove ¾" screws through a plastic flange and then sealed the joint with caulk.
