Picture Tube close call

I have had this happen before to me once.
Unless its happened to you, you have no idea how scarey it is. It really is a huge glass grenade.



Its caused by the energy stored up inside of the tube from the vacuum pressure.

So the first thing you should do when you can is let air into the tube to get rid of the vacuum inside.

I grab the board on the end of the tube and give it a twist to break the glass there and let the air in.
Inside the ring of metal pins there's a little glass 'pig tail' that's where they sucked the air out and sealed the tube.
So I think its safer to let the air back in there. (Rather than sticking a screwdriver under the red suction cup looking thing)

When the tube exploded on me, it was sitting on a rubbish bin at waist height and I had stuck a screwdriver under the big steel band to lever it off.
I now know what happened.
There's a glass join there under the band, its a weak point, I broke the weak point and the vacuum caused it to break right around the whole tube on that weak point, then the vacuum really took the whole screen inwards and the energy caused the glass shards to explode outwards.
I didn't get a single scratch on me, but the ground was covered in a 10foot radius of glass shards up to 3 inch long.
I did see the shock wave around the screen as it exploded.

It is sooo scarey (Scarry) how they explode like that, unless you have actually seen it happen...... And I hope you don't.

The other thing I did to get rid of the vacuum (in a rubbish pit) was to have it face down and shove a long steel tube thru the vent slits in the back of the TV and break off the Copper coil part of the tube where its tapered to the point where the electron gun plug is.