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Comment by falsenapkin | Hacker News Reader

Terrifying honestly, my aeropress experiences have always concerned me with if the mug can support the force. I know there isn't supposed to be a lot of force but I've used a few of these brewers and my experience is they're not super consistent! Hopefully glass is easier. I knew a barista who had a mug explode while using an aeropress, now imagine the brewer is itself glass as well during an event like that.

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I helped a guy pick out cycling gloves one time when I was a mechanic. The palm of one of his hands was a wreck. I don't know if I pried or he volunteered it:

Slashed the hell out of his hand trying to push a stopper into lab glass. It broke and momentum carried his hand into the glass.

You might get lucky if a cylinder of glass breaks across the diameter in your hand. You will not get lucky if it breaks lengthwise under your hand.

Oh that is awful! Total tangent but I started doing group rides again recently and am surprised by how few people wear gloves. After my first fall tearing up my hands I decided I would not let that happen again. And since then, it's really nice when going down not having to plan for where/how the hands land! This past ride someone went down on some really awful shoulder debris and luckily her hands were fine but man gloves are like $20...

If you're falling a lot you should think about some bike handling exercises. Low speed maneuvers will likely help. And when you hit rough ground, relax. Twitching the bike while in gravel will just make you go down faster. Just relax, hold on and pray for traction to improve before you reach the point of no return. I've avoided my worst accidents that way. One in particular flummoxed the guy I was riding with. He didn't say anything for a full minute after. That was, uh, quite a recovery (If I'd gone down it would have been a five man pile-up, probably with him at the front of it).

I haven't ridden seriously for years but my partner thinks I'm crazy for driving one handed. I had lots of practice doing low-speed maneuvers one-handed (end of the ride, it's hot, I'm thirsty). I could emergency brake one handed (once dual pivot brakes existed) For a brief moment I could do a track stand one handed. Driving one handed I'm more stable than most people are with two (also, grew up driving stick, so one-handed is de facto if not de rigeur).

I don't know if they still do this, but pros used to wear silk shirts under their jerseys to reduce road rash (source: Phil Liggett). I suspect any current gen synthetic sports undershirt (under armor, Kuhl, DSG, etc) would do. Two smooth layers of clothing will spin past each other instead of gouging you.

I'm plenty capable I mean I've had like 4 or 5 unexpected ground falls in 20 years. Hung over rushing to class no hands trying to put a water bottle in my back pocket, someone stepped out from behind an on trail overhead bridge support column, braked hard for someone doing something unexpected and illegal while I was riding downhill on cobblestone. Shit happens, lessons to be learned in every case but protected hands always welcome.

I've never fallen no-handed but it was nice having gloves while developing that skill too ;)

Man college campuses are a warzone for bicycles.

I watched two guys riding too fast through pedestrians hit so hard one guy lost five spokes. And one day some guy coming the opposite way from me on the bike path suddenly started flipping end over end (I think his chain fell into his front wheel but I, too, was late for class so I checked for concussion and fucked off). I just managed to squeak past him but if it had happened twenty milliseconds earlier I would have been part of his drama.

After those two incidents I decided I was safer in the street. Fuckin college kids man.

I regret to admit I was a bit faster than I should have been and probably caused some heart palpitations. I'm 30+ now and shaking my fist at the local college kids.

Worst crash I had was a header when I was like 15, mechanical failure (I was learning to "fix" my own). Fortunately adolescent invincibility and a chin first impact allowed me to avoid serious harm, but I took helmets seriously after that too!

I've broken a few coffee mugs by pushing too hard on an aeropress while it's on the kitchen bench

Sounds like an awful morning even if you get away injury free. I'll only use it on my beefiest mugs with walls straight vertical from mouth to counter. Watching people use one on a dainty mug with weird surface geometry and more of a cup shape gets me squirming in a hurry.

Glass may impart more force upon the mug but it is certainly not likely to break itself. You would have to imagine they will use thick pyrex which you could use to drive a nail.

Pyrex won't save you from shattering a cylinder in your hand. And this is the 2020's. You won't imagine how dumb companies can be. Check.

If this is the guy:

https://coffeechronicler.com/aeropress-xl-premium/

Then the fact that the inner cylinder is stainless steel means that if the glass shatters, you still have something supporting your hand. The inner cylinder might save you from life-altering lacerations to your hand. Might.

I'm not going to be the one to trust it. I've seen how much pressure people apply to aeropresses, and friends don't let friends push that hard on future shards of glass.

Yeah I'm less concerned about the brewer breaking under normal use, I imagine they've done due diligence there (though personally I would wait a year or so) but I'm more concerned if the mug shatters and then you have all this force shoving the brewer into the counter next is that enough to break it? Especially as the it hits a granite counter at a weird angle maybe with the flange or filter cap instead of the perfect circle of a mug on the normal mouth surface.

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