Jennifer Obleman
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, September 12, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - Friedrich Komzak is one of Yellowknife's foremost experts on vampire teeth - or at least, he ought to be, having handcrafted hundreds of the pointy chompers.

Denture technician Friedrich Komzak carves a set of partial dentures in the lab at Somba Ke Family Dental - the first direct service denture lab in the North. - Jennifer Obleman/NNSL photo

Every year at Halloween, the denture technician gets about 20 orders for artificial vampire teeth.

"When they smile they even scare me," he said.

Komzak also makes night guards, snore guards, orthodontic appliances, athletic mouth guards and splints for dislocated jawbones, as well as crafting, repairing and relining dentures.

Since he joined the staff at Somba Ke Family Dental last month, Yellowknife residents have been able to get these services done a lot faster than before.

With his arrival in August, Somba Ke's denture lab - the only one of its kind in the North - became operational.

Now someone with broken dentures who once would have waited weeks for repairs can be smiling again the same day.

"We fix (them) in an hour," said Komzak. "That's why our service is so unique. We're the only ones ... that have that direct service."

It's a service dentist Hazem Kobaisy had been trying for years to provide, attempting to recruit a denture technician since 2003. With up to 20 per cent of his patients here requiring denture services, he didn't like having to order them from a commercial lab in Edmonton.

"The turnaround was unacceptable," Kobaisy said.

"And the communication between the tech and the dentist needs to be face-to-face ... If you have the tech here, he can talk to the patient and get a perfect fit."

Having a denture technician at the clinic has reduced waiting times by as much as three weeks.

"It's been awesome," said Kobaisy.

"I hope (Komzak) hangs around with us for a long time."

Komzak was born in Germany and raised in Hungary before his family moved to Winnipeg in 1957. Certified as a denture technician in 1969, he has previously made and marketed dentures in Winnipeg, Minnesota, Vancouver and Edmonton before moving to the city with his wife Joann.

He's been making people's smiles for almost four decades and said the process begins when the dentist takes an impression of the patient's mouth. Then Komzak pours stone models and mounts them on an articulator - an artificial jaw - to set the teeth according to the dentist's instructions about shape, size and colour. The dentures are placed in the patient's mouth to check the bite and aesthetics, and then they're processed in acrylic. A dental lathe is used to shape the rough dentures with the final touchups done on a handheld trimmer. From there its time for a quick polishing and dip in a disinfectant before the dentures are finally inserted into the patient's mouth.

The entire process takes about a day, from beginning to end, he said.

"They will be eating supper with them that night," said Komzak.

In one day, Komzak will work on as many as 10 mouths.

"The day flies by. I love what I do," he said. "I love making people's teeth look beautiful."