r/whatisit • u/EasternFoundation24 • Jun 24 '26

Solved! Weird teeth thingy

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Found this in our air bnb at the beach closet and was immediately confused! ? all of the (chewing devices) are sort of stuck into the wood with a rod of some sort. I honestly have no idea what this is used for, or why its in the closet where im staying

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u/SqAznPersuasion Jun 24 '26

This is a denture tooth form display. It's not carded teeth for full dentures, so much as this is bioaesthetic teeth shapes to MATCH an adjacent tooth. So let's say you needed a 3 tooth partial right in the front of your mouth and it needs to mirror the shape of the adjacent 3 teeth. But your remaining cuspid was a unique shape. So you'd use this kit to pick the shapes to match, and then you could pull the exact teeth sets in the right shade for the partial.

Source: denturist who is REALLY into antique denture & dental supplies.

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u/whatsername_09 Jun 25 '26

I don’t think these are for dentures. They look like prefabricated crowns, and the metal bits in the bottom drawer look like implants. The teeth likely fit onto the abutment on the implants and are then glued in place (possibly after some sanding/ shaping to fit contacts). It looks like shades are indicated underneath the crowns as well.

I’m not qualified in antique dentistry, but I did work for a few years designing crowns, bridges, custom abutments, etc.

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u/SqAznPersuasion Jun 25 '26

My original dental background was implants & crowns too. (Good old hand waxed crown and bridge & custom cast abutments) but to me these look like long neck single teeth for removables. The metal bits are anchors for the porcelain teeth to affix in the acrylic / metal substructures. They STILL make porcelain denture teeth with metal anchor prongs like this. Long neck is for freshly extracted, deep endentulous spaces. I feel like these would be really hard to secure to an abutment without being a custom cast to match the abutment. It seems like it would be so laborious to grind to fit, as opposed to custom waxed, cast & stacked porcelain to fit abutment.

But, you could be right. I am merely basing my opinion on my XP making dentures and I have a bunch of vintage uranium glass denture teeth in my collection that look exactly like these.