Quote Originally Posted by Tom Bender View Post
If Japanese saws make too much noise you may have to take up needlework.
You would be surprised just how loud they can be... Especially rip cuts. The difficulty with ripping and Japanese saws is that if you are above your work, the teeth are actually going against the grain, and also lifting the work up and away from the saw horse or bench, resulting in a lot of very loud vibrations.

In my old apartments in the states, I was on the second floor in a wooden building, and those vibrations carried very easily down to the first floor apparently. But I was not doing anything special to insulate / decouple my work surface from the floor.

In my current place, I'm on the first floor, so this is far less of a problem. I do wonder how easy it is for vibrations from the floor to carry up to the walls though. In any case, rubber half dome feet and a bench with some mass seem to make saw vibrations, at least from smaller saws, a non issue. I haven't tried ripping any large boards to width or anything of the sort yet, though.