Few teething troubles here!
Down in the mouth after 45 years of work? Not me, says dental technician
By Brian Flett
(From The Orcadian dated March 13, 2003)

Linay Linklater has clocked up a milestone in his career - after working for 45 years as a dental technician.

Linay (61) of Scapa Crescent, Kirkwall, began working in the dental surgery just off Albert Street in Kirkwall with local dentist, David Dunnet, on March 10, 1958.

Billy Dunnet - brother of Bruce Dunnet - with other dental technicians, Linay Linklater and Willie Schollay in the Albert Street laboratory around 1964. David Dunnet opened a dental surgery in the lane between Glue's Florists and the Pomona Cafe in Albert Street, Kirkwall, in 1928. (Picture: Orkney Library Photographic Library)

He then worked for Davie Dunnet’s son, Bruce, who also practised in the same premises.

The business moved to accommodation in the Strynd in the 1970s and Linay Linklater went with the firm and worked from there until December, 1995.

He is now self-employed and works out of the Scapa Dental Centre, where Mr Stuart Burgher is senior partner.

Linay - who explains that his distinctive Christian name used to be the surname of one of his ancestors who originally came from Sanday, and has been a traditional name in the family ever since - still recalls how he entered the dental profession.

He explained: “My father just came home and said: ‘I’ve got a job for you’ and that was that. I never questioned it. I worked for Davie Dunnet. Willie Schollay trained me. Bruce Dunnet qualified in 1960 and I worked with him for many years until he retired.”

He is proud to have served his apprenticeship when he did.

He said: “The modern technician’s job is totally different from when I started. Nowadays they specialise in each individual stage, whereas I had to learn everything. It is not that long ago that I read an article written by a technician of my age who said that there were not many of us left who can do the whole thing.

“ One big advantage was working in the practice with the dentist – compared to a commercial laboratory – where you would never see a dentist. You are in contact with a dentist each day. It makes life a lot easier.”

Linay looks back to a fairly gruesome introduction to dental surgery – more than 40 years ago.

“I started with Davie Dunnet at his surgery in the lane off Albert Street. The waiting room was downstairs and the technicians’ workshop was through the back, with the actual surgery upstairs. Patients would come in and they got the choice of whether they wanted gas or needle. I was a young boy of 16. It was a common thing each day to have patients who wanted gas. Davie came down one day, and said to Willie: ‘I’m going to tak’ the boy up the day.’

“Off I went and it was explained to me that the main job was to keep the patient in the chair. He would give the gas himself. No doctors or anaesthetists in those days. You were given the gas upstairs. He said to me: ‘If you see the legs start to kick, just tak’ a hold of them. Had them doon and if you can’t had them doon, sit on them.’

“That was my introduction to gas sessions.”

Linay commented: “To be quite honest, I have never seen a dentist who could clear a mouth of teeth as fast as that man could.

“He always had a wee tray beside him where the first two teeth he extracted would go. Then the rest would just fly over his head, hit walls, go all over the place. You had to watch for the teeth coming out. You would get to the stage sometimes where the patient would start to come around and he said ‘I’ll have to stop now and give them a grain more gas. Put them under again.’

“Then the patient would come around and because he used nitrous oxide or so-called ‘laughing gas’ they were as happy as Larry when they wakened up. They would say it was just like having a right fill of drink.”

Linay Linklater from Kirkwall, who celebrated 45 years as a dental technician in Orkney, on Monday this week.

Nowadays, even one tooth extraction with gas has to be done at the theatre in the Balfour Hospital, said Linay, but nothing untoward ever happened to a patient in those early days of do-it-yourself gas. However, he added: “When Bruce Dunnet qualified in 1960, all that stopped. He took doctors in to administer the gas.”

And he still recalls in memorable detail Bruce Dunnet’s first trip to treat patients in Sanday in the early 1960s.

“I went with him as the assistant. There had not been a dentist in Sanday for years. We worked in a wee office in the Kettletoft Hotel. There was about 20-25 folk waiting, maybe more, when we got there. At 2am in the morning, there was still 25 folk waiting.

“The thing that sticks in my mind, was that the first three patients fainted. This was during extractions. Bruce stopped and said: ‘I’m doing something wrong here and I’ve got to get to the bottom of this problem.’ The patients were sitting in a normal kitchen chair with their head up against a wall. He decided it was the pressure he was putting on their teeth against the wall that was making them faint. So after the first three patients, Bruce decided that I would have to hold their heads. For two days I did nothing but hold patients’ heads, so that he could put a lot of pressure on to get these teeth out.

“In the early 1960s – it was the days of Brylcreem and things like that — it could get a very slippy job. But I thought to myself ‘If I let this head go, there’s going to be a nasty accident.’ There were a lot of things like that a dental technician would never experience now. We were busy every time we went to the isles – working until two or three o’clock in the morning. In fact, one woman came in to us and said: ‘I’ve knitted a pair of socks in the time I’ve been waiting.’”

Those fairly dramatic early experiences were not enough to deter Linay from staying in the dental profession.

“I think Bruce extracted over 200 teeth in two days on that first trip to Sanday. At the time, the patient just accepted that they would have to go three months then until their gums healed before they could get dentures. It was a common practice to go with no teeth until the ‘immediate dentures’ came in – where you got your teeth out and in the same day. That’s what it is at the present day. Patients just wouldn’t go without teeth now.”

As well as acting as a dental assistant over the years, Linay Linklater has created virtually every set of false teeth or dentures for everyone in Orkney who has required them for the past 30 years or more.

He explained the whole process of manufacture.

Linay said: “The job starts with the impression. It goes through five stages after that, so there’s a lot of work to put in. Your work has to be very accurate – the slightest mistake in it and it’ll not fit. We’re giving them back the way their teeth used to look before they were worn down over the years. It takes roughly six to eight weeks to make a full set of dentures. The dentures are plastic. The method of construction has never changed. Materials have improved, there is no doubt about that.

“Every mouth is different. They will never make a machine that will turn out a set of dentures – each one is different just like a thumbprint. What you’ve got to remember is that a denture is about the poorest substitute in the world for the real thing. Your teeth are sunk in bone. Then you get lumps of plastic put in your mouth and you expect that to be the same as your own teeth.

“I did a five-year apprenticeship with Willie Schollay. I could have done City and Guild exams which would have been an advantage if I wanted to leave Orkney, but I didn’t want to, so I never bothered.”

After 45 years in the same job, Linay says he still never gets bored.

“Never. I enjoy my job every day. You never know what’s in front of you each day. Moving from Albert Street to the Strynd was a big step. It was a nicer place. But then, moving from the Strynd to the Scapa Dental Centre was something better again. It is a state-of-the-art practice. There is no question about it. It is the place. It is custom-built and the technology in there is just second-to-none and they have a nice wee lab.”

He added: “I’ve never thought of retiring. It’s a very fascinating job really. There’s a lot of work in it and very precise work. It’s a lovely environment to work in at the Scapa Dental Centre. I love my job and I’m the busiest now I’ve ever been.

Linay Linklater using traditional methods to create a new set of dentures in his laboratory at the Scapa Dental Centre.

“I’m the only technician in Orkney. I start at six o’clock in the morning and finish when I get the day’s work done.

“Everything is dated to the dentist’s appointment. I can’t say I’ll leave that one until tomorrow or another day. There’s a date on every job and you have to be ready for that date or you’re up against problems. I do a lot of orthodontic work for the schools. Braces and things for children. Nowadays, it is all specialised.

“There are very few of us ‘old boys’ left who can do a bit of everything. But I’m the kind of person who has to have something done right, regardless of whether it’s in the home or at work. It has to be done right or it’s no use to me. I suppose it’s my job that has made me like that. Almost a perfectionist!

“They say that dental technicians are very temperamental people. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Sometimes they have to scrape me off the ceiling, but it’s not often.”

The main difference that Linay has noticed in recent years, is the increase in cosmetic dentistry being done privately.

He remarked: “At Scapa Dental Centre, we still offer the patient National Health Service dentures. But I would say 80 per cent of people coming for dentures go for private dentures because they are so much nicer. The quality of the teeth are harder, they’re nicely shaded, they look natural. Just as 80 per cent want private glasses, people are going the same way with their teeth. You do get lovely private teeth for dentures.”

In his position as the only person in Orkney to be able to repair broken dentures or replace lost ones, Linay Linklater has heard almost every excuse possible as to why people need new sets of teeth.

He joked: “A rough day on the St Ola has been the cause of many a lost set of false teeth, also the Ba’ or somebody’s had ‘a good weekend’ and their dentures have disappeared one way or another.

“I remember once, an old man came into me, who thought he’d had a slight stroke through the night. He was wearing this lower denture and it wasn’t fitting him properly.

“I asked him ‘What do you do with your teeth overnight?’ ‘I put them in a tumbler.’ And I said: ‘What does your wife do?’ He said: ‘She puts them in a tumbler.’

“I told him: ‘You’d better go home and see if your wife is having the same problem.’ I thought that was a classic tale — he was trying to wear his wife’s teeth. You could write a book about the tales I’ve heard over the years.”