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What the hell just happened ? GnR glass just exploded... !

Julian Hepworth

Julian Hepworth

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1 10 Years
Joined
Jul 8, 2014
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403
Location
Taunton
I just removed the glass from my GnR and has holding it vertically just below the top corners between finger and thumb, lowering it to the floor and when I was about 6 inches off the floor the whole thing just exploded - it actually jumped up in the air. I was left with millions of small pieces that were still crackling minutes later after I'd swept them up into a punnet.

The temperature in the room was 16 degrees, humidity 70 ish.

Over 25 year I've literally done that hundreds of times and that has never happened.

Were my hands too hot ?

WTF ?!

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Edit: I just did the same thing on another table and paid attention : my hands are actually always about 1/3 down each side, 4 fingers at back, thumb on other side, so not the corners - I've done it many many times.
 
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That’s a lot of weight to hold from the corners - I think you’ve just been lucky so far for it to not happen earlier. I always hold it just above centre and always with a towel (to avoid finger prints).
 
Don’t know if it’s the same, but video of Roman destroying flawed glass, but slight amount of pressure on the corners.. how did you manage to get the glass out by its corners?
 
Andydn said:
That’s a lot of weight to hold from the corners - I think you’ve just been lucky so far for it to not happen earlier. I always hold it just above centre and always with a towel (to avoid finger prints).
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I'm with you on fingerprints, I've got a dedicated pair of gloves for whenever I remove the glass.
 
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Andydn said:
That’s a lot of weight to hold from the corners - I think you’ve just been lucky so far for it to not happen earlier. I always hold it just above centre and always with a towel (to avoid finger prints).
Click to expand...
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Edit: I just did the same thing on another table and paid attention : my hands are actually always about 1/3 down each side, 4 fingers at back, thumb on other side, so not the corners - I've done it many many times.
 
Did the same with embryon glass and that’s one of the biggest pieces you get. Just put it down to experience and go Slower!
 
It’s amazing how long you will be finding piles of shattered glass. You’ll assume you’ve got it all and then stumble across a new patch every few months, it seriously gets everywhere.
 
My Whitewater glass exploded recently when in the machine for no apparent reason. fortunate it happened outside machine, I had to do a complete pf strip.
 
Pooman2084 said:
On the plus side at least it wasn’t over the game.

I had this happen to a Robotron bezel. One second it was in my hands, the next it had disappeared!
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Very true - that would have been a nightmare . Exactly the same - it just disappeared !
 
Can be a ticking time bomb, apparently any knocks and bumps etc weaken the glass and can just explode for no apparent reason.
Glad for you it happened away from the machine, what a nightmare that would have been!
I remember reading this happening to some oven doors for no reason.
 
Has anyone mentioned hot spots on the glass yet? If not, that would be my guess. Some part of the game/lighting making one spot of the glass significantly hotter than other areas.

It's the excuse we gave at least when we were removing a glass backglass from a game after a long day and it just exploded like that a few years back.

I also had new double glazing fitted in my house a couple of weeks back, and a couple of days after being fitted one of the panes cracked in half as it warmed up in the sun. Glazier came back to replace it and said it was 1/1000 that sometimes the panes have weak spots in the glass that only show up like that when under intense heat. Which might back up that guess.
 
M4carp said:
Can be a ticking time bomb, apparently any knocks and bumps etc weaken the glass and can just explode for no apparent reason.
Glad for you it happened away from the machine, what a nightmare that would have been!
I remember reading this happening to some oven doors for no reason.
Click to expand...

I think that might be it - although I've been taking glass in and out of these things since the 1990s, it's always been onto a wooden floor.
GnR is the first I've had on a uneven slate floor, so I wonder whether I might have put it down and unknowingly pinged it and then the next time it just popped.
 
Pipe insulation is perfect if you do have to stand glass on a hard floor, dirt cheap too.

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I've mentioned this before but I put propped mine up under a small hand towel to protect the kitchen floor, the cat decided to attack the towel so the glass fell forward and landed completely flat against the floor, the air cushion underneath meant it just hit the floor quietly without any damage. Luckily the cat had managed to scarper so it didn't land on top of her. *I put a chair in front of it now, lesson learnt, never trust cats!
 
Like what’s been said, the glass stores the knocks it gets over the years and all of a sudden just goes when the pressure build up gets to much.
Think of a balloon, every knock the glass gets over time is like a lung full of air going into the balloon till it eventually bursts.
 
Could be lots of things: poor toughening or manufacturing process, damage to edges, or spontaneous failure due to Nickel Sulphide inclusions during the manufacturing process. The latter happens to patio doors too sometimes - just explode into a million pieces.
 
A similar thing happened to my Tron the day after i bought it. I slid the glass out and carefully placed it on the carpet against the wall behind me. I then picked it up vertically by the middle with one hand (thumb and fingertips) , barely lifting it off the ground and boom, same thing.

Fittted UK spec glass which stopped the annoying rattle when the shaker kicked off, so not a total bummer.
 
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