Medical practice begins

I have always had a fondness of medical play and the idea behind being something such as a Dentist or a medical praticitioner performing his duties on the victims / patients available to him. I have influence in this from the dentists charactor from Little Shop of Horrors which was a low budget film from the 80s. A quick google of the dentist intro song will probably have you giggling away.

The dentist in the show is played by actor called Stephen Glenn Martin. He is mean, nasty and an overal not very nice dentist. His massive ego of self importance stems from a life of being mean and bashing puppies heads in. In order to channel his anger his mother said that he needed to focus on a job that he could get his hate along with his love for dishing pain out. So he became a dentist.

When you see the list of the tools he has available, it makes you wonder what will happen to his patient. It turns out that in this scene though the paient is actually a masochist and enjoys the pain massivly. In fact he enjoys it so much that he begs for more. This certainly sounds like a few people i know.

This is not true for a lot of people. The pure thought of anything dentist related sends thoughts of pain and suffering from scrapes and tooth drilling. It's a bit like marminte. You either think yes its the dentist, or no fuck that shit.

Now, I have a dental background. My parents owned a dental lab and I grew up around the business. It's why the first thing I notice on people is teeth. They intrigue me and I can always spot veneers and usually if someone has had something corrected. The second thing that I notice is smell but thats another story. I know how bridges are made, I know how that denture was produced and I know how to take an impression to make a model of your mouth to start any required work.

Now, to help with the charactor for a medical scene that i've been asked to be involved in, I of course want to find a name that I could use to help strike any anxiety into the patient and maybe even get a few ideas of what to boast about. So naturally I did a search for evil German Dr's. No one does evil medical science better than cold war Germans.

Aribert Heim (28 June 1914 – 10 August 1992) gained the nick name Dr Death while being an SS Dr for the Germans. He did unspeakable acts including as stated in a BBC news report which published his death "Injecting victims' hearts with petrol, water or poison was said to have been his favoured method at Mauthausen, and when he was "bored", he apparently timed patients' deaths with a stopwatch."

This person was all kinds of wrong, he was a evil nazi Dr who enjoyed torture and playing with peoples lives. There's no doubt that he was probably very intelligent and was experiementing with medical science that never came to public light. Information that no one will ever know. However details of some of his experients are around to have a read.

I have no desire to inject petrol into someones heart but the concept of this charactor is certainly a chilling one to think about.

It is because of this background that I have come to own a few interesting items. One of which is a micromotor that has had it's life in the dental lab cleaning up acylic dentures and polishing gold teeth. The same system is used by dentists just with various new modern smaller heads. The older drills were always bigger and more bulkly but they all make that high pitch sound which we all love or hate and instantly recognise.

I thought i'd share with you the transformation that I'll do to this trusted, used and loyal item which has served a number of years to do a job and now has found its way into my hands to be used for acts of evil and torture.

I intend to strip it down, clean the eletrics, service a few loose wires, clean the case and give it a new colour to better suit my medical needs.

I opened the system and it was covered in acrylic dust, It looked like a sandstorm of white bits. I noticed that theres a loose wire which controlls the speed of the motor. After a good vacum cleaning and a tooth brush to get between the bits the system looks rather clean and tidy.

I got this shot to help me reference where to solder back the wires to the correct postions. The only way to get the switches out of the case is to use a solder iron to melt the current solder and for the wires to pop off.

Getting the case seperate from the switches and number display system was not a easy task. The solder used was a really old type and needed a bit of heat presuation to melt down again. Solder today melts really quickly and easily. I had to be careful not to damage the wires on either side as I worked in the tight gap.

With prep clean up, I scrapped off all of the wax and glue from the case and gave it a clean down with degreaser to ensure that my new paints stick well. The plastic which the case is made from is a rough matt finish to touch rather than smooth and shiney. This means that I will be able to prime without needing to sand the whole thing down.

I used the great invention of frog tape to mask the front consol and to stop any paint from bleeding though.

I decided to go for a grey which looks better medical related than the bright yellow. I prime and then spray two coats of paint leaving several hours between each. I then seal with two coats of enamal spray to give it some durabillity. Over all it took a of couple days for the paint job to make sure that it doesnt bubble, crack or flake off.

The end result was pleasing. The paint and seal held up fine with no crinkling, flaking or signs of it not taking to the case. The frog tape also did its job well and protected the 80s front consol grapics.

It doesn't look brand new and still looks aged and used, but I am much happier with the way that it looks now rather than the beaten up yellow box it once was. As it stands now you can related to it as a medical instrument.

The next phase is to piece the whole thing back togther and solder the switches back into the case itself. Putting the wires back onto the switches was a bit more fiddly but worth the cause. The end result looks much more impressive than what I started out with. To finish the kit up I give the motor itself a clean up as well as the foot pedal.

Testing the system everything worked fine. It has a very high pitch noise which is sure to send shivers down the spine of any patient I get on the bench for examination. To buy one of these new at the low end would be around £70 for the black motor itself and around £60 for the power control unit.

To recondition it cost me next to nothing as the item was passed down through family and I already had the sprays in stock. It took me around three day on and off in total with me living life between.

One item to add to the growing kit of that which is Dr Smith.