For those who aren’t familiar, Defender Mouthguards is a company that offers custom fit high performance mouthguards. The mouthguards are created from a direct impression of the athlete’s mouth – just like you would get at the dentist’s office, but for a fraction of the cost.
I’d been wanting to try out one of these mouthguards for quite some time, so I was thrilled when I received a complementary molding kit in the mail a couple of months ago. Due to my crazy schedule at the time, I wasn’t able to open it and go through the molding process until just a few weeks ago. When I did, I thought it’d be interesting to take some pictures of the process and share them with you guys.
When you order a Defender Mouthguard, here’s how it all works…
They include a 5 minute instructional video for you to watch before going through the process. After watching this, a process that seems a little overwhelming at first becomes incredibly simple.
You also get some in-depth printed material, which has all the details, safety information, fine print etc.
To start out, you boil water just like you would to mold a normal mouthguard. However, in this case you’re not actually molding a mouthguard. You’re forming the tray to properly fit your mouth.
As soon as you’ve molded the tray, you need to quickly place it under cold water to harden it and make sure it doesn’t lose its new form.
After that, it’s time to break out the play-doh!
The molding clay feels just like silly putty. The difference is that when you mix these two colors together, a hardening effect takes place. Once mixed, you’ve got about 5 minutes to follow through with the rest of the steps.
After mixing, you place the clay into the tray you formed to your mouth in the earlier steps.
Next, you put the entire tray into your mouth and push it up against your top teeth so they sink into the clay. Then, bite down. It’ll feel like your teeth just got stuck in cement. Good luck getting them out!
At the end of the process, you’ve got something like this (minus a couple of potential cavities):
The final step is to ship the molded impression back to Defender. They make this an easy thing to do by providing you with all the packing materials and postage.
And then? We wait.
I’ll have an update as soon as I receive the finished product, a Lax All Stars mouthguard, in mail. Until then, below are a few that were made for college teams. Kind of cool to imagine a whole team having uniform mouth gear.