Doug,
What in the world is a Litho battery? Do you mean LiPo? By the way, do
you watch your laptop when the (LiPo) battery is on charge? We need to
be
careful with all the old-wifes tales that are repeated here, the devil is
in the details.
Just for experimental purposes, I once put a nail through one of my 2200
AH
3p Lipos and you are right, the fire starts pretty much immediately and
is
next to impossible to quench. That does not mean they will burst into
flames any second.

My apologies for the use of slang. Litho is a slang word for a LiPo
battery. This unfortunately is not an old wives tale as you infer. There is
truth in my comments made. No I do not watch my laptop being charged but I
do monitor charging of my larger glider batteries with a thermo sensor.
Litho batteries are sensitive to a number of conditions during the charging
cycle.
The public at large had to go through the same rechargable battery learning
curve when the Nickel Cadmium battery back in the 60's.
Common charging errors we 1. Over Charging 2. Thermal Runaway 3. Not
100% charged which caused a memory in the battery thereby reducing its
useful life.
Todays smart chargers aid in charging rechargable batteries. They protect
from Over charge states, thermal runaway, and undercharge.
The only problem is that to have a smart charger that charged all types of
rechargeables would be large and awkward to have around. Each battery has
a unique charging table. Some like high current charges in the beginning
and some like suttle ramp up profiles. This is way more info then this
thread was intended. I wanted to put out to the glider community that
charging new style batteries with old style chargers will cause you more
grief to useful life,more so then the name on the battery!