How To Remove Porcelain Fused To Gold Teeth

We purchase quite a bit of dental gold and many people ask how they can remove tooth matter or porcelain fused to gold teeth before they send it in, here is one such inquiry and my reply detailing how it can be done.

Inquiry / Question:
I have a couple gold teeth that I had removed, they still have some enamel or porcelain on them, I want to sell my gold teeth but I don’t know how to remove the old porcelain from the gold. My question is how does one remove porcelain fused to gold teeth?

Answer / Reply:

We have purchased a great deal of dental gold over the years and the enamel or porcelain used to make false teeth have an extremely high melting temperature which prevents the melting of the metals so we needed to develop something that eliminates the bulk of the porcelain before we could put it into the furnace for melting.

There are acid baths that will eat away the porcelain and not dissolve the gold but these are dangerous, time consuming and expensive.   On the advice of an old well experience colleague of mind he showed me a basic, safe inexpensive way to eliminate the bulk of porcelain and tooth matter in an efficient way.

The device is what I like to call the pulverizer, it is basically a piston/hammer type machine similar to one used in the metal working arena typically called a pneumatic forging hammer. (See details below on how you can do this by hand at home.)

Removing Porcelain From Gold Teeth

Obviously you likely will not have access to such a machine but you can achieve similar results using a regular hammer.  The larger hammer you use, the quicker your results will be.  A cement floor or pad, driveway or road will do. (cement is better as it’s harder)

* I want to take this opportunity to warn anyone who is trying this to wear the proper safety apparel including eye safety glasses. *

What I have done is place the gold teeth, gold fillings or bridge on a hard surface such as a cement floor, cover the items with a piece of cardboard (when they are smashed with the hammer of the broken porcelain will stick in the cardboard to be disposed of latter.)  Now cover the cardboard with piece of flexible plastic ( I use a cheap flexible cutting board purchased at the Dollar store.)  If you don’t have a piece of plastic thick cardboard will do.

Now that everything is covered up hit the area where the gold teeth, fillings or bridge is under your coverings, if you use a larger hammer such as a 3 lb sledge it will break the porcelain or tooth matter quicker but a regular hammer will work but you will have to strike it more.

The reason this works to break up the porcelain and tooth matter is that they are both quite brittle and will shatter into pieces and powder.  The remaining material will be free enough from the unwanted material so it can be weighed and eventually melted easier. It is quite interesting to see the remaining gold from the teeth, fillings or bridges, it will be quite flattened and actually warm after it has been hit due to the malleable nature of gold.

Again, I can not emphasize this strong enough, where the proper safety protection, if you are unsure do not do this at home.

If you have dental gold you’d like to sell check out our page on selling your dental gold, we’re always happy to provide you with a quote on your items!  Of course if you’re not interested in removing the tooth matter or porcelain yourself you can send it in ‘as is’ and we will do that for you.