The other day when I got out of bed, I removed my retainer and slipped it in the pocket of my sweat pants. Not smart, I know, but it is what it is. Unfortunately, I later left my sweats on the floor, and someone (probably me) stepped on them, thus breaking my retainer. Never one to take the easy way out, I fixed it myself.
Before you break out the Super Glue
First, some warnings before you attempt to fix your broken retainer…
Your orthodontist is really the only person who should attempt to repair your retainer. If you fix it yourself, but things don’t line up exactly, you could mess up your treatment. Moreover, your attempt to repair your retainer could have the opposite effect, inadvertently damaging it to the point that you orthodontist can no longer repair it.
Another risk is that, depending on the type of damage, your repair could fail, and a piece of your retainer could break off and lodge in your throat. Finally, any “at home” repair is likely only temporary, meaning that you’ll probably have to visit your orthodontist regardless.
How to fix your retainer
Still not convinced? Neither was I, so I grabbed a tube of Super Glue and got to work. First, here’s a picture of my retainer following the repair. It looks suspiciously like my retainer before the repair. There was a clean break running lengthwise down the middle, roughly where the red line is.
After playing with it a bit, I found that I could actually line the fracture up very well, meaning that I should (at least in theory) be able to repair it.
I started by squeezing out a puddle of Super Glue on a piece of scrap paper and used a toothpick to “dab” the glue along both sides of the fracture. I then aligned the two sides and pressed them together until the glue started to cure. After that, I used the toothpick to dab more Super Glue along the crack from both the top and bottom sides.
After letting the Super Glue cure overnight, I popped my retainer into my mouth and it fit like a charm. I still went ahead and made an appointment with the orthodontist just to be on the safe side, but it’s been about a week and the repair is holding up nicely.
Update: Back from ortho… They were impressed by the repair and, after straightening the wire a bit, said I can go ahead and keep wearing it as long as the glue holds up.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
what kind of super glue did you use
thanks so much for this helpful info….the exact same thing happened to my retainer. decided to research super gluing it back together while waiting for the glue to dry lol.
Something exactly like that happened to me! I was eating with my friends and I left my case at home. So I thought that I would leave them in my bag (not the smartest choice). But well after I ate and put them on, I noticed they had cracked D: I was so depressed because they had already cracked before and my orthodontic is kinda of a douche and he was soooo pissed the first time, I didn’t want to go over that again :$ But now, with this method, I think I’ll be able to fix it untill I have to go to my orthodontics. Thank you so much for posting this! Really helped a lot!
what kindof glue did you use? i have a weird kind of retainer thats half plastic and half wire and the small strip of plastic snapped… i’m a little bit scared of the super glue aspect of this but in all honesty i’d literally use less than a DROP of glue…
hi….. what about the wire broken? can fixed by myself or go to the dentist? any options tnx..
Would it be fixable if the Metal wire broke?