In article ,
Lobster writes:
I ordered a pane of toughened glass about 1.5m tall by 0.5m wide, which
I collected today intending to fit it - it's for a fixed light adjacent
to a front door.

Anyway, I got the old glass out this evening, cleaned everything up,
applied putty to the rebate and picked up the new pane... I was holding
it vertically between fingers and thumbs, just lining it up with the
frame when suddenly - KAPOW!! without any warning or provocation the
whole pane exploded instantaneously in mid air, and landed in a heap of
tiny pieces all over my feet. It must have looked like a Tom and Jerry
cartoon; I was left there holding out my empty hands with a stunned look
on my face.

Clearly I need to have a discussion with the glass supplier tomorrow
morning. It seems to me that the pane was flawed in some way - was the
toughening process done wrong in some way - plausible? Is this sort of
thing common? I'm just envisaging the reaction of the supplier tomorrow
- if he refuses to play ball and tells me I bashed it or dropped it I
would like some knowledge at my fingertips!

You only have to brush a corner of it against any brickwork
or concrete for that to happen, and you'd probably never
realise you did that. Double glazing installers do this
occasionally, apparently always with the largest and most
expensive and most important window unit in the installation.
I suppose it might have been left with some strange stresses
in it as a result of toughening.

I'm also concerned at another level - had this spontaneous breakage
occurred an hour later the pane would have been in situ and the property
empty for the night, and therefore totally open to burglary. And if the
glass is so fragile, WTF is the point of paying for it to be toughened?

If it wasn't toughened and it broke, you might now be in
hospital having got a large glass dagger stuck in you.
That happened to a friend of mine in the US -- fell through
patio window, and ended up with a long glass dagger stuck
in his arm. Besides the fact he nearly bled to death because
someone at the scene thought it was a smart idea to remove it,
it was 9 months before he started regaining feeling in his
forearm and hand, with no assuurance that would ever happen
at all.

Would appreciate any comments (before tomorrow!).

Laminated glass would be better from a burglary point of
view, but unless all your ground floor glass is laminated,
there's no point.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]