The Undeniable Truths of the Dental Laboratory

If you drop a crown, it will land in an area that you cannot see from where you are sitting. The crown will most certainly land on it’s occlusal surface, and you will kneel with your full body weight on the razor sharp margins. If the restoration is a veneer, you will roll over it when you move your chair.

If you touch a crown quickly with one finger to check if it is hot, it will be ice cold. Once you pick it up and let it roll into your palm, it will immediately heat back up to full firing temperature.

When the phone rings after hours, there is a fifty-fifty chance it will be an upset customer who wants to see you right away, or possibly your spouse demanding that you come home immediately. Knowing this, you will pick up the phone anyway.

The more important the case, and the later it is, the more likely it will develop a deep horizontal crack at the last possible minute.

The one bottle of porcelain you let run completely out will be the only shade you need today.

When trimming margins, it is not at all like SAT tests: your first guess will be no better than your second guess.

If you drive the pick up and delivery car home at night, it will always have an empty tank when you’re extra tired.

If you drop a crown and are lucky enough to not kneel on it, it will find its way back into the darkest, dustiest, most neglected corner under your bench. The place where the poisonous insects live, and your foot won’t reach. But your hand will.

If you decide to come in and cast on a Sunday to get ahead (or caught up), you will be out of propane and or oxygen.

The Saturday you decide to go in for a few hours (in your Beavis and Butthead T-Shirt) will be the day your local oral surgeon will stop by to talk about an implant case. If you have not shaved he will have the referring doctor and the patient with him.

If there are two crucibles on the counter top, you will pick up the hot one.

If you drive three quarters of the way home and turn around to see if you left the boil-out tank on, it will be off. If you continue to drive home, it will still be off, but you will get up in the middle of the night to go back and check.

If you know the patient personally, their crown will not fit. If the patient is your neighbor or mother-in-law, the remake will not fit either.

You will need two ultra-thin disks for any job requiring one ultra-thin disk.

The day you wear new shoes to the laboratory will be the day your plaster man calls in sick, and the traps will back up.  The darker the color of the shoes, the more drastic the back up, and the busier the department will be.