Topic: I TOLD you paperweights were dangerous!

[Ivo]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1042917/Paperweight-collectors-home-goes-flames-glass-globe-turns-suns-rays-superhot.html

[Greg.]

Seems its not that uncommon, this one sounds worse...............

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-world/2010/06/05/dream-home-destroyed-by-a-4-paperweight-115875-22311204/

[Pinkspoons]

Oh, I remember the Mail story being posted on here years ago. It was around the same time that I stopped a dealer's table catching fire at an outdoor fair when the sun did the same thing with a large globe weight he was selling - the wood had just started to smoulder.  

[Greg.]

talking of wood smouldering......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu4Y9FfNofo

[TxSilver]

To add further insult, they all look like modern Chinese pws to me. 

[jonchellycain]

Anita i was thinking along the same lines, if your gonna burn your house down with a paperweight at least do it with a little class, and a clichy/bacarat or a nice perthshire weight, not a cheap chinese one 

[Max]

I didn't expect to find this when I Searched, to be honest...but it's in Glass Archives...  :24: :24:

http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,2845.msg21664.html#msg21664

..I've updated the pics now...forgive the filth round the sculpture, it's on the mantlepiece in the kitchen and no-one can see up there...so why clean?!  

[Carolyn Preston]

My mother used to keep a magnifying mirror in the upstairs bathroom that she used. One day she came home and was furious with us all for burning the bathroom door. Sure enough, there was a streak of burnt wood across the outside of the door in a straight line across. Her theory was that we had been fooling around in the kitchen, got something WAY too hot and went rushing upstairs to throw said item (cookie sheet perhaps?) into the bathtub. We all denied such charges vigorously! It took us some time to realize that the sun was coming through the window, reflecting off the magnifying mirror and thus burning the wood. The straight line was created as the sun moved across the sky.  :huh: :chky:

Carolyn