First there are two kinds of denture teeth, acrylic and porcealin. Most dentures today are made with acrylic teeth while some are still made with porcealin teeth.
Acrylic denture teeth
Acrylic denture teeth are used most of the time for most denture tooth repairs. Even if the denture tooth was orginally porcealin, it can be repaired with a acrylic denture tooth.
The acrylic tooth will still function the same as a porcealin with slight differences such as not being able to eat hard candies, or nuts. Wear might be slightly different, as porcealin denture teeth are very difficult to wear down, while as acryclic denture teeth wear down.
Porcelain denture teeth
Today some dentures are still made with porcelain denture teeth, and cost 10 times as much when dealing with each tooth. Folks who get denture repairs involving replacing porcelain teeth should make sure the tooth is porcelain. Porcelain teeth are very durable and takes more time to fix.
Denture Tooth Type
Dentures are made to conform with your facial features. There is a broad range of denture teeth with some being fat, skinny, tall, short, rounded or square tapered to name some styles. With so many different variations, it would be very difficult to blindly pick denture teeth that would fit your denture correctly cosmetically.
Some OTC denture kits are packaged with denture teeth, and after we described all the different variations of denture teeth, a good question would be to know if those hand picked denture teeth would fit your dentures?
Along with the different shapes, denture teeth also are made in a variety of ivory colors, from very light ivory to a light brown ivory. Again, most folks may need a denture tooth repair after they have worn their dentures for a while. The shade of ivory might be different than when first purchased.
What tooth is really used?
As you may have noticed, very rarely does any denture repair lab advertise porcealin denture teeth repair with another porcealin tooth. This is because the cost of porcealin denture teeth is dramatically higher than an acrylic denture teeth, and takes a lot more work to repair. Mostly today, acrylic denture teeth are repaired.
If the denture tooth is loose, usually the denture tooth can be put back to where it fell off under the condition you have not tried to glue it yourself. Once you apply glue to your denture teeth, it may be difficult or even impossible to use that tooth because the glue on the denture tooth may be difficult to remove.
In these special cases, more than likely a new denture tooth is used to repair denture teeth.
Denture Tooth Costs
There are many manufacturers of denture teeth, where some use low quality materials and sell denture teeth for cents each. Others use quality materials, where these denture teeth cost dollars each. The cheaper denture teeth tend to wear down quickly and retain food stains easily. The opposite can be said with quality denture teeth.
Porcelain Denture Tooth Repair
When dentures are made with porcelain denture teeth, the denture making process is slightly different. Normally, it takes no extra steps to secure acrylic teeth to a denture, but with porcelain dentures teeth, the porcelain will not directly bond with the pink denture acrylic.
For each porcelain denture tooth, the denture must have two small metal posts that extrude from the denture. Every porcelain tooth is made with two small holes, and when put onto the denture are slid down onto those two metal posts making a stronghold for the denture tooth.
When a porcelain tooth breaks, usually the metal posts are broken too. It is costly to repair porcelain denture teeth with new porcelain teeth because porcelain is ten times more expensive than quality denture teeth. In addition, two small metal posts need to be added to the denture again to give the tooth the support it needs.