When I looked at what was available for DIY moulding ear plugs I had no way of distinguishing between the various offerings on Ebay (and Googling didn't help) so, in a justification of the marketeer's art, I went for the most eye-catching advert.

Here's what turned up a few days later -



Just out of shot is small velvety bag to keep the finished plugs in. At least I assume that's what it's for as it isn't mentioned in the instructions. A nice touch anyway and when you're only charging £12 with a few profit margins to be taken out along the way every penny must count.

The instructions were easy enough - take out a quarter of the material from each pot, mix the two bits together to a uniform (pinkish) colour and push / prod / mould it into your ear. You have two minutes to do this before it sets. Not knowing what to expect I had a medical professional assisting with this but her assistance only amounted to scribing an X into one of them so I could tell left from right.

It says in the instructions that you'll get a better fit if you can hold your mouth open slightly (1-2") during the 10 mins curing time and it suggests finding something of suitable thickness to bite on, battlefield surgery style. I found a plastic electronics box and spent the cure time dribbling over my shirt. Those 10 mins seemed like an eternity.

This is what emerged from my ears -



It was at this point I was glad I had the medical professional to hand as they really looked like something a biologist might be interested in. Quite what ontology was recapitulating we're still trying to work out.

So, how well did they work? Well they block my ears up but not quite as well as properly fitted expanding foam plugs. Whether that's intrinsic to the design / materials or whether I cocked up the 2 min rush to get the stuff into my ears I'm not sure but they do provide enough gloop in each pot for a second go so I'll try again at some point and compare. They are however a lot easier to fit than expanding foam plugs which is a huge plus.

Out on the bike (and again compared to the foam ones) I got slightly more wind noise and slightly less engine noise so there's some frequency selection difference between the materials. On balance it makes for a more relaxing ride if I can't hear the rattles so that's another plus. I haven't yet tried to mould earpieces into the material so that may be the next stage.

How long they last, whether I lose them or whether my opinion changes over a longer ride (only 10 -12 miles so far) I'll find out when I try them on a ride to the south of France in 10 days time.

Nice write up.

You really need to cram the goo in your ear. It helps if you elongagate the ball a bit before shoving. My second attempt produced something with a longer "stem" into my earhole and a bit of a mushroom head on the end. The stuff stays soft for a bit longer than two minutes but don't mess about. Next time I think I might buy two kits and only make three sets of plugs so there is no shortage of putty.

Apologies for the non-medical terms. I know there's an anvil and hammer in there somewhere which explains the ringing noises, but drums and stirrups and goodness knows what else is beyond me.

Andy

After a few weeks, a couple of thousand miles, a hearing test and a chat with an ENT consultant I thought I'd update my findings. ENT, for anyone outside the UK or who doesn't recognise the shorthand, stands for ear, nose and throat and a consultant is a high end grade of hospital medic in the UK health service. In my case I was using the ear part of his skill set.

I started off using the DIY moulded earplugs as my plug of choice. After the previous report I had a week or so of local running around on the bike using a variety of helmets before heading off to the south of France on my 125. Over the course of that week a couple of things were noticeable. Firstly the moulded plugs were so much easier to put in / take out than foam disposables. They go in with a kind of rotatory motion almost as though you're screwing them into your ear. With a little practice this just takes a few seconds each. With one of my helmets (a more close fitting one) though I started to get some pain in my right ear in particular as though the helmet padding was putting pressure on the moulding. After half an hour this became noticeable, particularly when taking the helmet off. I've never had this with foam disposables using that helmet and my conclusion was / is that there was slightly too much material in the moulded plug. Cutting down on the amount used for moulding - or taking a Dremmel to the existing one, would mean less pressure. I didn't have time to do this before departure so I used a slightly looser fit helmet instead.

Over the next few days I was quite happy with the moulded plugs. Compared to the occasions when I rode short distances (on and off the ferry for example) without them the noise reduction was substantial. They remained easy to fit, they stayed in place over time and generally worked well. However, even with the looser fit helmet I was still getting some ear pain in my right ear and I decided one morning I'd go back to one of the two sets of (no name) disposable plugs I'd brought with me.

Properly fitted into my ear canal these were a revelation. I could hear almost nothing. All the wind noise vanished and the engine sounded more like a vacuum cleaner than a screechy two stroke. All I could hear was a kind of electric motor humming noise somewhere down around ground level. Even the annoying occasional fingernails on the blackboard squeal from my back brake sounded acceptable. How sensible this is is a different discussion but there's no arguing that they work extremely well.

There are other downsides to foam disposables as well as not being able to hear anything at all. Firstly you have to fit them into your ear canal and not just shove them loosely into your outer ear. Fitted like that they hardly work at all and are nothing like as good as the moulded ones. And that's the problem. You fit disposables by rolling / squashing them into a thin sliver and pushing them into your ear canal before they expand back out again. With a new pair you have maybe five or ten seconds before that happens. You can reuse them but each successive time they expand back faster and after somewhere between half a dozen and ten uses they expand faster than you can get them into your ear canal. That's when you have to replace them. Somewhere around use four or five onwards you can still get them in but only if you're quick / concentrating etc - and even then it can take three or four (or many more) attempts. That's the point at which you shove them in as best you can and leave them. Yesterday I was trying to get an over used disposable into my right ear while keeping an eye on a skip lorry reversing towards me in a carpark. Would I get the plug in before I had to get out of the lorry's way. Well, no. There's no way you can concentrate under those conditions so I just shoved it in as best I could and rode off. The moulded ones would have been a much better choice at that point (except I'd left them at home).

Conclusions - the disposables are much better at noise reduction but there is an argument that they're too good (not one I subscribe to but I know others do). They are however more difficult to fit - particularly if you reuse them. On a bike trip you're really going to have to reuse them unless you have the space to take a crate of them along with you. Blocked up ear canals also gave me some some adjustment problems (i.e. pain - a bit like having a cold) when changing altitude rapidly in the Alps. Moulded one are not as efficient but they may be good enough and they're much easier to use. Just watch out that you don't make then too big so they stick out from your ears. I suppose a professionally produced pair would take these points on board and through experience, better materials or whatever may produce something closer to the efficiency of the foam disposables, but they'll cost.

So how good do they need to be? How much noise is damaging? A few days ago I had to visit my local hospital for a periodic hearing checkup (about 10yrs years ago I damaged my left ear when a gun was fired too close to it). The hearing test came up with the same results as usual (normal right ear, slight reduction in my left) and I discussed ear plugs with the consultant. His opinion was that, from a hearing protection perspective, zero hearing as with the foam plugs is probably more than you need. A combination of a decent helmet and something like my moulded plugs would be fine. So that's what I'm going to go with. I'll have another go with the moulding gloop and see if I can improve things - but I've also ordered a box of disposables from eBay just in case.