[casually takes apart and puts together a lighter with their ifixit kit during standup]

adjusted it so the flame is way bigger now.

@chirpbirb Be careful with those, if you adjust it to be wide open enough, the flame can actually propagate back into the lighter; I've seen it happen.

@krutonium i might turn it down a bit with a screwdriver, then. reason i opened it up is because the adjusting dial actually is broken and won't turn the little valve

@krutonium @chirpbirb that.. shouldn't ever happen unless there's actual oxygen in the lighter tank besides gas? genuinely curious how that would happen

I've 'overclocked' dozens if not hundreds of lighters, the cheap ones you don't even need a toolkit for, you just take off the metal with your thumbnail and move the latch to full, lift it so it doesn't move the gear and move it back, then turn it to full again, never had that go wrong, besides maybe causing scorched body hair xD;

@anthropy @chirpbirb In the case of the one I saw go kablooey, it was open wide enough that it couldn't self extinguish; The valve didn't close. They had put it out by waving it around and then lit it again about 10 minutes later, by which point I assume air had backflowed into it or somthing? Either way it got incredibly hot in their hand really quick, so they put it down and backed away to watch the like, 2 foot flame, and then it kaboomed.

@krutonium @chirpbirb ohh maybe if you keep it on for long enough that you melt the valve and such? then you end up with a 'runaway reaction' that will melt the plastic of the tank itself and that will eventually cause it to blow from just softening, but not really because the flame went in but because the flame is eating it from the top down.

people in the school I was in were generally pretty unhinged with them, they'd even just throw them on the ground so hard they'd explode that way hah