As I understood it, he LINED his kick in the early days with tin foil, hoping to up the reflective surface and the resulting volume.
This would be pre Zep.
I never read that he crumpled tin foil, newspaper or anything else for service as a muffler. Though the notion seems to have populated Wikipedia type founts of knowledge, deeper reading suggests he experimented with lining.
Crumpling it up for projection? Bonham wasn't stupid.