"My curio spontaneously exploded!" Topic

Hello, all.

So, uh…yeah. The title says it all. Don't know how the hell it happened, but the full story is here.

angrypiper.com/?p=1770

Check it out, if so inclined. Comments and/or theories welcome, there or here.

e – GADS!

Some possible explanations…

link

Sacre Bleu!!!

Chris B offers interesting scientific theories, but I'm going with gremlins.

I hope my Ikea cabinets don't do that.

Here, too!

I know what happened….

Volley fire I would think! Can't trust those figures after nightfall.

No more like Magic Missiles those are Fantasy mini's

ZULUPAUL for the win!

Dan

Well it wasn't the wraiths. They could have just floated through the glass.

How is the stability of the case? Does it wobble any, or loose anywhere? Are you next to a roadway with heavy truck traffic? (Vibrations from that could rattle glass, maybe even enough to cause breakage.) Did you save all the pieces to put it back together like a giant jigsaw puzzle? (Seeing the pattern of cracks could reveal the initial breaking points.)

(I'm betting on truck vibration… ;-)

More questions ;-)
Check the hinges to make sure they (or the glass) didn't fall out? (You said it's IKEA, so maybe an assembly step was missed?)
Your floor looks like it is a hard bare surface. If so, you might want to put a piece of carpet under the cabinets to reduce (yes, that vibration thing again… ;-)

Glass is a funny thing, it could have been hit earlier, some strange temperature change, minor earthquake, suspect it was there awhile but something to tight or expansion.
Was putting in a exterior window on my outbuilding years ago, was nailing in the plastic flange and was working on the bottom and luckily facing down because all of sudden glass was falling over me. I thought someone through a object but looking around no one was in sight.

Being on the budget end of the furniture spectrum I wonder if Ikea is using poorly-manufactured Chinese-made glass. There have been many reports here in recent years of glass sheets from this source spontaneously disintegrating or exploding.

The door was not properly annealed.

In 1974 I was in an industry that did printing on glass and plastic containers for the cosmetic industry. I learned quite a bit about glass. We also did annealing on large glass plates. To put it briefly glass is a "rigid fluid" which is always trying to get out of the unnatural shape we mold, roll, or press it into. If a glass has not been heated enough and then cooled properly it will have great weakness in it which will eventually give way. Sometimes we found some jets in the ovens were not working properly and hundreds of thousands of bottle had to be run through again.

Same with the glass plates.

This annealing could be so bad that even a light tap would shatter the glass like sugar or sand.

Otto is almost certainly right (this time) but I prefer to blame the miniatures. Have they been too long between games? Are they on a long losing streak? Must be tempting if the muzzle of your cannon always face toward the glass.

So far, I have not experienced problems with footlockers, cardboard and plastic--unless you count the armies which mysteriously went AWOL.

Hope you can contact the seller, might be some fault they're not aware of that needs a recall to avoid injuring people. Perhaps a refund is in order too!

Fireball spell followed by a cone of ice. Pesky wizards.
Or probably one of the more scientific answers above.
Now, how many of your troops volunteered to help clean up? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Same thing happened to a car window when left in the garage for two weeks over summer vacation. Between heat and stress from being in the closed position (it was a quarter vent window)it shattered.

I'm pretty sure it was the volley fire.

Some 30 years ago, my then-girlfriend told me this story: She washed the dishes, including our good Arcoroc glasses. About a half an hour later, one of those glasses just exploded. Everything else was fine. The water was the same temperature as usual and our apartment was the same temperature as usual. We never really figured it out.

I blame the 15mm Martian Metals Traveller PCs that I had just painted and left on the dining room table.

I have seen "Night at the Museum", I know what happen!

Never put troops in glass cases without having them unload firearms

Maybe one of the troops forgot the saying about glass houses and stones?

Dear Timbo

Unfortunately now there's no way to know. Once the glass has shattered there is no way to know. The stress and tension is now relieved by the shattering.

Oh, your display cabinet exploded. I read the title of this thread and for a moment thought the OP might be seeking medical help!

Well, I have been assured it's likely due to uneven stress around the hinges. As I said in the post, there was no significant change in temperature oar anything really. It just happened.
Bashytubits: Thank you. That was amusing.
Zephyr1: I live considerably far back from the road, and it's not a high-volume truck route. My floor is wall-to-wall carpet (the only place in my house to have it is the basement). As far as trying to reassemble it like a jogsaw puzzle…um…no. Did you see the pictures? I would be there for the rest of my life.
Although science beyond my ken is most likely the answer, I tend to agree with War Monkey and Mithmee. It's those damn miniatures. And they're all fantasy miniatures in that case.
TILTOWAIT! MAHALITO!

I actually have a less obvious suggestion: A nick in the edge of the glass.

Many years ago, I helped fix a case of a $17,000 USD coffee table (Boeing 727 copilot windshield that had just been replaced. Turned out that it had been bumped against a protruding bolt head during installation, nicking one layer of the glass, which then shattered in flight due to thermal stress of altitude cold and defrosters running)

Wife rage ?

Sorry, this is one of my fears realized.