From the carton to the garbage can.
 

Back in the day when there were four repair shops on the same street, I was visiting a shop. John had just finished installing a new crt in a electrohome tv. John turned the set on to start the adjustment proceedure. We heard a tic tic tic sound. john unpugged the tv and without thinking reached in to re attach the ground strap. the next thing i saw was a hand moving faster than a Bruce Lee kung fu move and with it was the deflection yoke.The next thing i heard was a one word responce (F**K).

Well when i was a kid i used to go to the city dump with a couple friends , they would be hunting bicycle parts - i would pull tubes from the tv sets there , one day a 23 or 25 inch color set was siting there and i told a friend about the dangers , he wasn't convinced , so i stood 10 feet or so from the set and tossed a big rock dead center into the face and what a boom that was , a piece of glass landed at my feet and he was a believer , so another 25" set was picked on , i tossed the rock and it hit but the crt did not go off , multiple cracks were made in the front and a huge hiss and whine came from the set , this went on and on and as it did you could hear what sounded like things colappsing inside the crt but it did not implode.... i took a 16" sharp set to pieces and had the crt , took it to a friends house and we went to the attic 3 floors up, he dropped it and BOOM but there was a spark of electric with it , i said wow that picture tube was still holding energy .... one more - i put a 21" color table model admiral out for garbage - the crt was weak and the fly was bad , had i known i could have hunted a fly down who knows what would have happened to the set , i didn't think of it at the time and when they loaded it into the truck a minute later i heard a huge boom and then thought geez i didn't air that tube .. too bad i didn't just store the set because i might have been able to save it now.

Mike

All these horror stories! Seems the only safe place to work on or watch a CRT set is in outer space! (or the vacuum inside my head)

When I worked at a TV shop in the late 70’s early 80’s rebuilding trade-ins was a large part of my job. Once a month the garbage man would reserve some room for us to dispose of dud CRTs. I would snap the neck with a large wrench before removing the tubes from there cabinets. One day as my partner and I were sliding the tubes into the garbage truck I shouted “LIVE ONE”. My partner and I pulled the garbage truck driver to ground. KaBlaam! That live FJP took out three other tubes when it landed in the bottom of the truck. The truck driver looked like a deer in the headlights when we all stood up. The guy had no idea of the implosive power of a CRT. Doogie

Figured I'd share this the next time this thread resurfaced: the other day I was moving some things around and needed to set a 21" roundie crt somewhere. I took a folded-up towel and put it on my desk, then placed the crt face down on the towel. I then left the room for several hours.

When I came back I couldn't believe my eyes: the crt was sitting, pretty as you please, face down on the floor. There was just the slightest "tilt" to that towel-I never could have guessed it, but the crt apparently started to slide and then-plop-down it went! It survived the impact, looks like no harm done. But that was a close one. Sometimes I wonder if I should be allowed to handle anything more fragile than an anvil!

Oh-one more thing. In an old thread, somebody mentioned that they used to remove faceplates by dropping the crt facedown from a pretty good distance, and the shock (I guess) would cause it to loosen. There was some debate at the time as to whether this was tongue in cheek, but the poster seemed sincere. Well, not long ago I was preparing to junk a dud bw tube with a bonded faceplate. It did not have cataracts. After airing it, I decided to do a test. I dropped it on the ground numerous times, and then started tossing the crt as high in the air as I could so that it would hit facedown. Nope, all that bottle did was bounce all over the yard, never loosened anything, didn't break, either!

As a kid, I accidentally dropped a 10lb dumbbell on a 12lp4 that was sitting on the floor. I looked like Quint from Jaws when he thought the oxygen tanks were going to blow! Amazingly, the weight struck the neck full force, but all it did was crack the base. I still have the tube as a spare, and it still tested as new a few months ago...

I have worked in a CRT plant for 38 years and we have never had a worse injury from an implosion than a cut that required a few stitches.

Would that be Clinton???

I recently disposed of some BPC sets that were broken and I didn't want to deal with.
1 was a 20" Sony VCR combo set. I threw it in the dumpster, and man... heard a big boom when it hit the bottom. I looked in and the CRT had imploded and it blew the back right off the set!

Intentional implosions we may be able to learn from.
 

Here are some implosions that were done for fun:

First implosion with a bonded glass Trinitron, if it had a safety band, it was removed:
http://youtu.be/cuPDWUK7pMA

Second Implosion with a Flat Trinitron with a removed band:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x6J3KJ2Uso

Third Implosion with a Toshiba CRT with a removed band:
http://youtu.be/5T6NqiHZ-Vk

had one of those 19" rca table sets with a weak but recently replaced crt.
green was gone and it arced in the neck.being a few month old rebuild i figured it was a leaker.tore it down to replace it.when i unbolted the mounts i heard a crunch.then a tink.
i stepped aside and BOOOOMM!!
nothing left in the case but the face,shadowmask,and band.
it made dents in the metal case.glass stuck in the ceiling and broke the bulbs in the shoplight above.

I scored a Philco 19" BW, 1961 vintage, found at curb. Nice shape and it had a nice raster and needed the usual paper cap replacement. As it sat on a stool operating with the back off, but I noticed the grounding spring arcing where it contacted the CRT aquadag, I left the room for just a minute and heard a boom. Lucky, but what a huge mess to clean up...

My implosion experiences are in two categories, accidental and intentional.
I ‘ve only seen one accidental implosion. When I was about six or seven, one of my grandmother’s neighbors had a house fire. And, the portable TV on a rollaway stand came rolling out of the house and onto the sidewalk. (With the help of the firemen…) The TV was on fire! And, less than a minute after hitting the sidewalk, the CRT sort of “collapsed”. And, when it did, you could see flames inside the TV set!

Years later, when I was in high school, the electronics teacher was anxious to get rid of several years accumulation of old and obsolete CRT’s –no doubt very valuable today! In that era, growing up in countryside being turned into suburbs, there were numerous places where we took CRT’s after school. A favorite area was a nearby abandoned gravel quarry whwer we’d go after school. (Yes, there were guys who had rifles in the trunks of their cars in our school parking lot! But, this was a different time. We used the weapons on old cars, old CRT’s, etc. –not each other!) Many an old CRT met its fate face down in that quarry with its neck the target of a .22 LR bullet. We had one guy who had no fear at all of what a CRT could do. He sat an old CRT face down in a dumpster, slipped a pipe collar with a piece of wire on it and pulled really hard! The neck snapped at the bulb and all that happened was a slow escape of phosporus. Said rocket scientist then took an old CRT and placed it in the dumpster. The then threw another CRT at it! The resulting double implosion was quite spectacular!

While shooting the neck off an octal base tube at 50’ feet or so was fun, when my grandfather had the opportunity (with a set from one of my cousins), he “did the deed” with the miniature base of a more “modern” CRT. He wasn’t impressed with the “whooosh” it made. He just muttered, “they just don’t make ‘em like they used to!”

The scariest NON-implosion story I have is this: In 1980, my brother and I had bought a big inventory of tubes (not CRTs) from a surplus store that closed down in Chicago, and we were offering various early radio tubes for maybe $3 each in local ads. So, we made a few radio and TV collector friends. One time a couple of them came to our house for a few tubes, and they were driving an old Suburban (with no back seat installed), and the entire area behind the (front) seat was PILED with loose CRTs! I mean, not a layer face down but at least two, maybe three layers of them at all angles, mostly probably 21-inch B&W ones. I just shuddered to think of what would have happened if they had hit a bump on the road or had had to hit the brakes hard.

A friend of mine was telling me he knew someone years ago(probably 1960's) was walking through a TV store/shop and hit the neck of a CRT of a running set accidentally with a briefcase. Of course the CRT imploded and shot the neck through the front of the set hitting a set sitting across the isle. Must of made a heck of a noise/smoke/arcing! What a mess!

Like Kojak said "I don't buy it". Sounds like an urban myth or whatever it's called. Breaking the TV's back cover, the neck, having what's left of the thin glass neck and guns shoot forward with enough remaining force to go through the front of the CRT then through the safety glass?? I don't think so.

I have to say it sounds improbable also, breaking the neck sure, but not the rest of it! :no:

If he had a Briefcase he was probably a Salesman, there's nothing a Salesman likes better than a tall tale! :yes:

it could have happened like that but probably didnt.i resent the salesman comment.when has a salesman ever told a story that wasnt true?wink,wink!this forum biased against members of the sales industry.an outrage!wink,wink

Closest I ever got to an imploding TV was the time some friends and I took turns throwing rocks at a small 13" RCA I found in the dumpster. Nothing spectacular, the glass was slowly cracked and the vacuum let out.

However I found this video on youtube. Fast fwd to the 1:05 mark. They heave a brick at it and break the safety glass, then they heave another brick and implode the tube....the glass flies at least 2 ft. from the set. Beats anything I ever saw when it comes to an imploding CRT.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHRxc...ure=plpp_video

Hey it was a story some old guy told me. Probably has some small amount of truth in it but the story seems to change little by little over the years.