How do you break a bottle without hurting yourself?

Need answer fast! (Joking.)

In movies you see people breaking the bottoms off of bottles to use in bar fights or whatever. However, it seems like it would be hard to prevent the whole bottle shattering in your hand.

So, if it can be done, how?

The bottle is cast out of sugar.

Really? Because I’ve done it with real bottles and it shatters like in the movies.

Well you can do it with a real bottle. I have as well.

If you wish to not hurt yourself use one made of sugar.

If you mean a standard beer bottle, the neck tends to be relatively strong - and in particular the thicker “collar” right at the top where the cap is crimped on. If you hold it between thumb and forefinger right at the top and strike the side of it, near the base, on something hard, the top ought to stay intact and you shouldn’t injure yourself.

Don’t come running to me when it all goes wrong, though. (Or if it goes right, for that matter, without putting the broken bottle down first!)

It certainly can be done. The tricky part is not avoiding injury but ending with something usable as a weapon.

What you want is the bottle to break leaving the neck intact (for you to hold) but the body to break in a long point (to scare the other guy)

The good news is that cheaper beers tend to come in bottles of uniform glass thickness and that break in a long usable tip. The bad news is that in those bottles the neck itself might break and either cut your hand or leave you with something you cannot really wield.

Definitely avoid teardrop bottles (such as Michelob’s), they will just shatter in your hand and leave you holding ground glass.

Bottles with a pinched neck (such as old Beck’s) tend to break at the narrow point and leave you with just the neck and no point to impress your foe.

In any case, if you ever come to the point where using a bottle as a weapon is needed, make sure you have plenty of bottles around as it is a bit of a hit or miss. Grabbing the only bottle to see it break into something useless kinda ends your chances to talk your way out of it.

Give it a solid whack on a solid surface as close to the bottom as you can (and by god, don’t miss the edge of the table, swinging air is really embarrassing). You want to use as little force as you can to maximize your chances of getting a long point (but hard enough that it doesn’t just bounce!).

Go ahead, ask me how I know.

I’m sure it can be done, but it’s not as easy as it looks in the movies. I saw a news video last week of some kind of protest in Denver where they were breaking beer bottles (I have no idea what they were protesting). A guy would hold a bottle by the neck and whack it with a hammer. Sometimes it would take 2 or 3 blows to break it.

Theater and movies use sugar props for safety. You can make them at home:

Don’t break it over your own head.
:smiley:

You can do a fair amount of damage with an unbroken beer bottle, so why risk it?

Martial artist Bas Rutten gives his advice on the subject at around 5:30 in the following video:

He says not to break it.

(Incidentally, that whole video is wildly entertaining, as is just about anything he appears in. Also see the “Bas Jones” parody of it.)

What about a wine bottle?

I’d recommend cooking sherry. Mom always said you shouldn’t fight with a wine you would drink.

Absolutely. This is why I always say that the point is to scare or impress your opponent. A broken bottle is a really stupid weapon to try to use for real.

ETA: And by “the point” I mean the tip of glass on the broken bottle

Attesting to the value of a beer bottle as a weapon even unbroken, there is a YouTube video out there of a bunch of drunk college students trying to recreate movie stunts by breaking bottles over their friends’ heads. I can’t seem to find it now - too many imitators. The point is that it’s a lot harder to do than you’d think, and the odds are pretty good that the skull will break before the bottle.

I’ve come to the conclusion that virtually any movie cliche performed after, say, 1960 is impossible in real life.

The audience want blood, not internal injury.

Hit the other guy in the face. There will be blood. Teeth too.

Put it in a plastic bag, smash the bag + bottle against a table, pull the remaining part of the bottle out of the bag?

Well, you asked :wink:

Except that movie (I forget which, sorry) where a guy sneaks behind a guard and hits him with a blackjack to knock him out and the guard just screams “what the hell, you just hit my head!, what are you trying to do?”. The movie was supposed to be comedy but they got that part right.

A good point against drunken brawls in general. Drunks are really hard to fight since their sense of pain is somewhat impaired. I once split my thumbnail right in half (breaking a bottle on the floor, btw, and not for a fight) and didn’t notice until the next morning.

Similar thing happened in “The Last Seduction”. Kidnapper smacks the victim on the head with his revolver to knock him unconscious. Victim just shouts, “OWWW! FUCK!”. Pretty funny actually.