AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

The other day I visited Chip Foley, who works at Prosthodontics Associates in South Portland. After a fairly in-depth tour of the lab, he brought out all of the dental sculpting waxes and wax tools and I just sat in his lab for an hour and a half just trying them all. I'm most accustomed to using hard modeling waxes which aren't really useful for additive modelling, or really soft waxes which aren't very good for carving. Injection waxes are ok for both, but these waxes he let me use were great. They are taylor made for hot sculpting as well as carving. They are also opaque and come in several different colors-beige, brown, mint green, red.

He had this no-flame wax tool heater upper thing that was incredible. I have no idea how it works, but there's a 1" hole that you stick any metal tool into and it heats up the tool like an alcohol lamp in about 2 seconds. You can stick any dental tool or pick in there and it works, but if stick your finger in the hole it's harmless. He also had a more typical double wax pen with temperature readout that was perfect for more controlled work.

He gave me a small thing of tooth-colored wax, some dental supply catalogues, and a handful of the most useful carving scrapers (in his opinion).

I'm realizing more and more that tools and equipment made for industrial applications make the best art and jewelry making supplies.

Here are good dental suppliers:

Zahn Dental
http://www.zahndental.com

Renfert
http://www.renfertusa.com

Darby Dental Lab
http://www.darbylab.com