A pair of scissors on formica table suddenly bursts into flames | Hacker News Reader

A pair of scissors on formica table suddenly bursts into flames

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I was following this yesterday and there seems to be very little commentary regarding the lack of damage to the table surface or the color staining to the scissor blades. This looks far more like someone blowtorching the blades while holding the scissors over the table (one presumes outside) to get some of the plastic to melt, then later placing the cooled scissors on the table and moving it inside. Classic Reddit runaway arguments with no consideration that the OP is pulling their leg.

It does seem awfully similar to that mouse that caught on fire a few weeks ago - https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1i7br8w/my_gi...

Until I clicked the link I thought it was a post about spontaneous rodent combustion.

That could very well still be a possibility here.

There is a lot of superficial and structural burn damage to the desk there. (Not that I believe the mouse story is true.)

In the closeup of the table spot you can see the formica veneer cracking upwards, also, you do see discoloration of the blade near the plastic. Most of the heat would be rising upwards so it wouldn’t hit the blade as much.

The more experience that I get the more I think that serious endeavors should include a magician.

In this type of scenario where we're investigating an interesting one time event, it's important to try and decide how something may have happened. But equally important to try and decide how something could be faked to appear to have happened.

In a world ever driven by attention and lies, it pays to have a professional attention grabbing liar double checking the facts.

Those scissors apparently have a habit of the handle melting away (see reviews): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SSVNNZC

As one comment pointed out, they could be using nitrocellulose in the handle.

After another pair of kitchen scissors had the plastic handle fall off, revealing a tiny metal tang creating the inevitable weak spot, I went looking for an all-metal pair. Not at all easy to source as it turns out, there are only a small handful of even vaguely reasonably priced models available.

They're just scissors, how are we still as a species finding ways to make them shitter and more breakable? They're a solved problem and yet some guy managed to hit on a way make them out of melting plastic?

I don't need them to be laser etched or artisanal or blessed by levitating monks or whatever. Just two bits of metal with a rivet that will still be scissor-shaped when I'm dead and buried. It's not even that much more metal than plastic handled scissors, and the hard bit is in the edges anyway, not the handles. It's probably never been cheaper or easier to make not-shit things and yet there's just so much shit everywhere.

Slightly an aside, but you might try searching for dressmakers shears instead. Lots of those seem to be all metal. (Not sure what you consider a reasonable price however)

Funnily enough I do have a pair of exactly those from my grandmother (still very functional maybe 80 years on)! Drop-forged and everything. They were probably a week's salary or something!

> how are we still as a species finding ways to make them shitter and more breakable?

Products when they are first introduced tend to be overengineered, since the way they will be used is not entirely known. As this knowledge accumulates the products can be optimized to be just good enough (just strong enough, just durable enough). You should expect in equilibrium that products will be optimized for minimum cost at the minimum tolerable level of quality.

Preach it. I'm holding tight to my heirloom all stainless steel scissors with "don't-run-with-scissors" sharp ends.

On the other hand, we aren't being advised not to run with scissors any more.

Come to think of it, what's the point of the sharp ends? Seems mostly useful in horror movies.

There's a booth in a consignment shop in town that has a load of old high carbon steel Case scissors of different sizes. Resale shops may be the way to go.

Labor has never been more expensive than now. Raw resources have never been under more competition than now. We as a species are more numerous and consume more scissors than ever before. Supply chains have never farther separated end user from producer, as now.

Scissors have never required less labour to make and steel is maybe not quite as cheap as 5 years ago but still mind meltingly cheap in historical terms. The metal in the handles of an all-metal pair of scissors is maybe a dollar. Bulk steel is 50 cents a pound.

Scissors also don't have to be "consumed", or at least not substantially over the course of a human life. I'd expect them to be durable goods. It's more than possible to make a pair of scissors, for not even that much more that a shit pair, that outlasts the first owner. We just generally choose not to.

It's a lot cheaper to cut the blades out of flat sheet metal and affix the injection molded plastic handles to give a nice 3d sculpted ergonomic handle than it is to cast/forge/machine the ergonomic handle out of steel. For 90 percent of users it will be just fine to use plastic, and the plastic will last for decades without issue.

I don't buy the "but good scissors cost too much to make today" argument.

> Labor has never been more expensive than now.

Each hour of wages is amortized across dozens, hundreds, possibly thousands of scissors. You could double the wages of everyone involved from manufacturing to fulfillment to logistics to sales and it'd translate to maybe multiple pennies' worth of a per-scissor cost increase.

> Raw resources have never been under more competition than now.

As the other commenter pointed out, steel's still plenty cheap and abundant.

> We as a species are more numerous and consume more scissors than ever before.

That's more than offset by our increased ability to make scissors at scale.

> Supply chains have never farther separated end user from producer, as now.

The whole point of that separation is to drive down costs.

----

All in all, the available information points rather squarely to manufacturers being greedy rather than costs somehow forcing their hand.

I find no mention of melting in the reviews. Are you joking?

Sorry, the reviews are actually on the Scotch site itself: https://www.scotchbrand.com/3M/en_US/p/d/cbgnhw011057/

The one review I found with the word "melting," or anything conceptually close to this, was "My Favorite Scissors have Died!" The person is not describing melting in the heat or deformation sense, which I think a lot of people would have assumed. Rather, they're exuding a liquid, like a lot of old rubber materials. To be generous, I'll wonder if maybe it's flammable.

I doubt they would use nitrocellulose, genuine celluloid is expensive and hard to obtain in my experience.

I had a look and didn't find one where they melted. Do you have a link to the specific review?

Can you copy or screenshot one? Amazon requires login to sort through reviews for some people.

The reviews are on the Scotch site itself, not on Amazon: https://www.scotchbrand.com/3M/en_US/p/d/cbgnhw011057/

This is from Reddit, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Most people in the thread don't even trust it.

The poster said they have been in contact with Scotch and are sending the scissors to them. I reviewed the poster's account when they originally posted it, and nothing sets off my bullshit alarm.

That's why one says and does those trivial things if one is going to post a hoax. Bullshit alarms have false negatives, and we'll never find out about most of them.

Yeah, there are many motives to fake this:

- derive personal amusement

- embarrass the credulous

- drive traffic to the subreddit

- serve as an experiment on credibility/marketing (to which we are contributing data, even here)

- reddit karma and name recognition, which do correlate somewhat to monetary value if you're motivated enough, and if not, still give you concrete advantages

- create future content for reaction streamers

And the formula for tricking reddit like this is pretty well-known by many, so there's your means.

> reddit karma and name recognition, which do correlate somewhat to monetary value if you're motivated enough

This is usually reason #1, and money doesn't have to be involved. Never underestimate the importance of imaginary internet points.

Their value is not imaginary, unfortunately, even without money ever being involved.

For me, it's always the 'Jason' factor.

Everyone knew a Jason when they were a kid, someone who was seemingly a compulsive liar, and would just say anything and everything to have people listen to them, even if then to say 'that's horseshit'.

Reddit seems to be full of Jasons.

Use your head! Would a person blatantly lie simply to get views on a social media site? No, it's much more likely that Scotch makes titanium scissors that spontaneously combust. /s

....and this is how we end up with Aliens over NJ.

> They had been been used about an hour prior to open a bag of Smartpop.

Leaky nearby microwave oven heated the metal part of the scissors?

can microwaves actually heat metal? i thought microwaves needed dipoles, which conductors won't have?

I thought that metal was heated by microwaves, but a cursory search (which I was too lazy to do before) suggests that it isn't.

So I now think my comment is misleading.

I guess I should make sure my scissors are UL listed from now on.

Anyone know what chemicals do they use to clean the screws on injection molding machines? Something that oxidizes plastic? The handles look like they were made in a 2-shot mold, hard plastic frame with soft plastic touch surfaces. If some cleaning chemicals got stuck between the shots they could eventually leak out and somehow start the exothermic reaction upon contact with air.

I have been to an injection molding shop a few times and it always seemed like a lot of labor was going in to cleaning the molds and the injection screws. Maybe a worker found a shortcut.

I see two issues:

1 - the amounts would be so incredibly tiny, even microscopic, for it to get lodged in there.

2 - any flammable stuff would either evaporate or gradually oxidize.

Anyone know why this post was flagged?

I flagged it because it's almost certainly a grade school prank.

To link to a post like this - a post that a sensible person would dismiss out of hand - and to host a discussion around it, is bad for HN.

It attracts the wrong crowd.

Big Scissor wants to keep us in the dark.

is this not a viral ad for Smartfood (tm) Flaming Hot White Cheddar flavored popcorn snacks?

OT: I know people love to love the old Reddit, but the new UI moved away from React as is now a lot better for viewing galleries like this than the old one.

https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/1ilmshx/a_pair_o...

I just hate infinite scroll

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