Ifeel that I have to set the record straight:

Current practice in dentistry is to remove decay and old fillings before
preparing a tooth for a crown.
The next step typically is to rebuild the tooth. This can be done with
composite materials or silver-mercury amalgam. The tooth is then shaped for
the crown and an impression is taken. The result can be a crown over an
existing mercury filling. This is accepted practice in the USA.
In the past gold crowns have been done over existing old mercury fillings
for many different reasons.
When you heat the gold crown on a tooth you have no idea if there is mercury
present underneath. The heat required to melt the gold will either
volatilize the mercury or create a gold amalgam. Neither is good for you:
the mercury vapor is toxic and the amalgam will release the mercury when it
is heated the next time for casting.

In the US I am not aware of the teaching of gold amalgam in dentistry in the
last 50 years.

There is no way to economically cash in a gold crown. Your best choice is
to play with it and make something. The Karat content of the gold varies
all over the place. I suppose the standard gold tests would let you know
what it is.

Charles Friedman DDS
Ventura by the Sea where we extract black gold from the ground






I had a tooth extracted today. It had been crowned with gold. They
gave me
back the gold crown, tooth still in it of course.

I seem to recall hearing that Coca-Cola actually dissolves teeth. Is
that
a workable solution to removing the old tooth from the gold crown?
Is
there a better one?

Grant

Hammer.


A propane torch will just burn out the tooth from the gold.

Beware mercury fumes. The gold in crowns may be or contain mercury-gold
amalgam, not just gold-copper casting alloy.


Gold crowns are not made from amalgams. Gold amalgams are used for
fillings. Silver amalgam fillings are always removed before a tooth is
crowned.

The reason that an amalgam filled tooth gets a crown in the first place,
is mostly, that there is new decay around or even under the filling, so
the tooth has to be cleaned and the amalgam is removed to make place for
either an inlay, overlay or a full crown. You cannot prep a tooth
properly for a crown, with the amalgam still in place.

It not necessary to put a torch to a tooth with a crown still on it.
Since the tooth has already been extracted, it will have become brittle
rather rapidly, because it is no longer fed by blood vessels and nerves.
Just take a pair of pliers to it, and it'll break in pieces quite
easily.

BTW, before I became a goldsmith, I spent three years in dental school
at the university of Amsterdam trying to become a dentist.