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Making dentures is a long, tedious process I wish we had gone through our first year - because then I wouldn’t be doing it now! In short the process is tedious and time consuming. The steps are numerous and can be a headache. With wax rims attached to triad bases teeth are set to match the patients vertical dimension and proper occlusion. When everything looks good in wax the dentures are sent to the lab for processing.

We didn’t process our dentures, (we only processed the maxillary arch, but set teeth in upper and lower), but we learned all about it and even watched an old video from the 70’s about dental lab technicians and processing dentures. Jealous? There’s nothing like watching denture resin flow with swanky disco music bumping in the background to make you want to be a dentist.

The wax, denture base and teeth are set into stone and essentially the wax and the base are removed and resin is put into its place. The stone keeps the teeth in the exact same setting as they were before. After the processing procedure is done the denture is returned. The only step left is to clean out all the stone and excess denture resin, polish with pumice and acraluster and then we get to break it! Oh well, everything is a learning process. Here is my intermediate polishing process. There is still some stone and acraluster in between the teeth, but it really won’t get it’s final polish until after it has been broken and repaired. I also included some photos of what I would look like with dentures. Enjoy!