Movie glass shards

[LuckyDan]

I'm watching a marathon airing of Sledge Hammer episodes. Almost every one features a body slamming into a pane of glass, like a window, or a door, or a glass table top, with shards flying everywhere and laying all over the ground, but with the actors showing absolutely no visible signs of injury. 

What is movie glass made of? How can it look so realistic but be so obviously harmless?

[txfilmfan]

1 hour ago, LuckyDan said:

I'm watching a marathon airing of Sledge Hammer episodes. Almost every one features a body slamming into a pane of glass, like a window, or a door, or a glass table top, with shards flying everywhere and laying all over the ground, but with the actors showing absolutely no visible signs of injury. 

What is movie glass made of? How can it look so realistic but be so obviously harmless?

In the old days, it was sugar glass (which, incidentally, was used as the meth prop on Breaking Bad).  Sugar glass is just a form of sugar syrup, usually with some type of stabilizer. 

Nowadays, breakaway glass is usually some type of synthetic resin, like Piccotex.

This website sells all types of stunt props:

https://www.newrulefx.com/collections/flat-glass

This company is a big supplier of breakaway glass to the studios:

https://alfonsosbreakawayglass.com/

 

BTW, it's not completely harmless, but order of magnitude safer than glass.   You can still be injured by breakaway glass.  The stunt folks use techniques to minimize injury on set.