Sir, a 60-year-old male presented to our Dental Hospital's Acute Adult Dental Care Clinic complaining of pain from his carious lower anterior retained roots. Clinical examination also revealed a partially handcrafted, upper, complete denture that the patient said he had 'made himself'. He had previously worked as a fabrication welding engineer and used his skills to modify his upper, acrylic, complete denture when it broke in half. He had glued half of another denture that he had found in the medical recycling plant that he was working in at the time to one of the broken halves of his own denture (Fig. 1a).

Fig. 1
figure 1

The handcrafted upper complete denture (a) Fitting surface, (b) The custom made teeth - * constructed from gold locket, # constructed from flat plug pin, § chalk-like material, (c) aesthetic appearance in the patient's mouth

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The other handmade parts of the denture were as follows (Fig. 1b):

  • The 12 was constructed from a gold locket that the patient had melted down and moulded into the shape of a lateral incisor

  • The 13 was cut from the end of a flat gold plug pin that was taken from an electrical mains plug

  • The patient reported that the upper right posterior flange was made from a dark grey chalk-like material.

While the resulting denture was neither retentive nor stable, and had very poor aesthetics (Fig. 1c), the patient is clearly talented and was proud of his unique creation. The fact that he resorted to DIY dentistry is a broader reflection of the struggles faced by patients in accessing affordable dental care when NHS options are disappearing. Indeed, a quick search of the internet came up with YouTube videos and websites dedicated to making DIY false teeth.1 Some patients have even resorted to pulling out their own teeth.2 This is a clear sign that NHS dentistry needs to be more accessible to patients and we welcome the new CQC focus on the growing crisis in patient access to NHS primary dental care3 that will hopefully reduce the knock-on effects on secondary care.4