Replacing missing teeth in a skull

[Schrecken]

This is a tutorial on how to replace teeth in skulls where some (or even all) of the teeth have fallen out or were lost.
Here I have started with an African lion skull from a customer who wanted me to restore the dentition. The skull was purchased on Ebay and it had the 4 canines and a couple of molars, and a couple incisors.  The canines didn't fit properly in the sockets so that's why I chose not to use them, otherwise if I have the real teeth I will of course leave them in the skull.  It seemed that the canine teeth weren't original to the skull, or they had cracked to the point that they no longer fit right. The end result will be that the customer will have the loose real teeth and a skull with artificial teeth.

First thing was to get the copious coats of industrial strength paint off the skull itself - I used ordinary paint stripper for this purpose as well as some acetone. It took 4 separate treatments to get *most* of the paint off - I didn't want to do anymore treatments as the skull is kind of flaky in places to begin with and I didn't want to damage the bone.




The skull with most paint removed:


Of course, paint removal is up to you (and your customer). 

My goal was to replace all but two natural upper incisors which were in good shape and I saw no need to replace.  I cast urethane teeth in a mold of a very large set of male lion jaws that I normally sell on Ebay. In this situation only the teeth from the gum (bone) line are available and therefore roots/partial roots needed to be constructed.  Now, you can mold teeth from a skull and have the same thing here (or as noted I do sell jaw casts of many large predators like lions and bears - I can pour and sell individual teeth as well), or you can buy whole canine tooth sets (I sell an unfinished male lion canine teeth set, and a few other places like BoneClones also sell canine replicas) and just grind the roots to fit the sockets.  However, it's unlikely you'll find molars and incisors cast root and all, unless you do it yourself.

I started with the cast teeth and sanded the bases lightly (where the root would be if they had roots), and then I got some 10 gauge wire and cut small sections as an armature for the root to be formed on. Then I drilled a hole into the base of each cast tooth (for small incisors you will need to use a thinner wire of course) for the wire to fit into.  On the big back molars you will need to drill two holes, one for each root.  Then you want to glue the wire into the tooth base (hot glue works well) and trim it to be slightly shorter than the root would have been.  Then you can fit each tooth into its socket in the skull and make sure the wire is the right length - it's OK if it touches the bottom of the socket.  You may have to bend a curve in the wire to fit the shape of the socket. 

Next, you will need some sort of epoxy putty.  What you want to do is to form a root or partial root around the wire - you only really need to form about the first half of the root for the biggest teeth, just as long as there is enough area for the putty root to be eventually glued to the socket when the teeth are finished.  Before the putty gets hard, you can wrap each root in thin plastic, like part of a grocery bag, to test fit it into the socket w/o the putty sticking to the bone.  This is the time to make sure the teeth sit at the right angle.  This is much harder if your skull has no teeth - but if there are some other real teeth you can close the jaws to be sure the tooth sits in the right place and doesn't impinge on other teeth. If the skull has few or no teeth, you will need to test fit a few teeth at a time.



Then, once you've got all the teeth fitted to the sockets, you will need to prep and prime the cast teeth for painting. I use a casting urethane so what I do is to wipe the teeth with alcohol to get rid of any mold release, and then sand them lightly (to get rid of any flaws and also scuff the surface).  Then I wipe them with alcohol again, and then hit them with a couple of liberal coats of spray primer, like Krylon white primer.  Then I sand again (you will want to get some of the primer on the putty part of the root if it will show a little when the tooth is inserted in the jaw) and then prime again.

At this point, you can start gluing the teeth into the jaw permanently.  I use a water-based glue, and also some hot glue in places.



Again, you may want to go slowly if you are replacing more than a couple teeth - to be sure you don't have to grind anything down to achieve a good fit.  I did have to do some grinding - in this case the cast teeth were from a much larger animal and I was fitting them into a smaller skull. The customer wanted the biggest teeth possible, which made it rather challenging, to say the least. I did have to grind on the tooth surfaces of the canines so that the jaw would (mostly) close.  I put up with a slight gap between the upper and lower incisors rather than have the canines ground down too far.  I didn't want to alter the shape of the canines too much.



Then, after I was satisfied that all the teeth were permanently installed and fitting as well as they could, I did one final very light sanding of the teeth and re-primed them again. (if spraying, you will need to mask out the skull or just spray your primer in a cup and paint it on as I did)



Then came the finishing paint. I used ordinary acrylic paints, but either way, you will need to seal or clear coat to protect the finish.  I painted the whole teeth (and the two real ones to match) with a yellowish base, the color of the part of the tooth that's below the gumline.  Then I painted the enamel portion an off white.  When that dried, I put a thin wash on the teeth with a reddish yellow/brown stain.  If you're matching real teeth you will of course need to paint the casts as close as you can to the original real teeth.  I had a little artistic license here because I wasn't matching anything, other than what looked good with the skull. Then I clear coated the teeth a couple of times with a high gloss. Again, you will need to match the sheen/finish on the real teeth if you have some real teeth in the skull - unless you want to paint them completely.

[lorefuma]

nice save. the only thing is that I don't like much the color on the teeth, I would prefer a little less color, but is most a thing of taste (or maybe of photo).
A set of smaller canine can work better, but the customer have made his choice!
Nice  tutorial, whit some nice ideas. Thank for the work of made it!

[racksandriverstaxidermy]

awesome thanks

[Terry N]

I left you a note a few days ago in regards to getting some black bear teeth from you. You answered to let me know what you had available and by the way thank you for your reply. I answered to let you know what I needed but I haven't received an answer and I thought you may not have received my last correspondence. In case you did and have just been busy I understand and apologize for troubling you again. In the event you did not receive my last correspondence I will explain my needs. I need two black bear teeth both from the lower jaw in the center between the two canines. The teeth you have from a small black bear would most likely work because the ones I need are from a small to medium size sow. I think you had said that I would need to build the root but you could provide everything above the gum line and that would be great. Please let me know how much you would charge and I will send you the money. I would like to thank you for your help in this matter.