One of the most common laments of the modern era is that they don’t make ‘em like they used to.

But there are still areas where technology can’t improve upon old fashioned craftsmanship, no matter how hard it tries.

Raymond R. Thenot and his sons Justin and Joel, for instance, still make hand-crafted dentures using the same methods — and in many cases the same tools — that Raymond P. Thenot learned in Germany during World War II and used to start what would become Edgewood Denture Clinic in the 1950s.

The senior Thenot, who passed away in 1983, was born in France, but his parents died when he was very young, so he came to the United States to be raised by an Aunt Henrietta. He grew up in Dayton and went to the Catholic Chaminade High School.

He went back to France in 1937 and joined the French Army, but was captured by the Nazis two years later and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Koblenz.

“He kept hearing the Germans say that they needed someone who was good with their hands, so he put himself in the position,” Thenot said. “They’d pick him up from the camp and take him into town where he learned how to make dentures.”

They had him working the night shift, and would lock him in the lab with a co-worker, a girl from Russia.

“So guess what happened?” Thenot said. “I have a half-sister. He married (the Russian girl), but after the war, the Russians came back and took the wife and daughter and he never saw them again.”

When the American Army liberated Koblenz, Thenot’s father jumped up on the jeep of one of the commanders and showed them the way through the city.

“His boss told him to go ahead and leave,” Thenot said.

He stayed for a while, met a German girl named Amalie, married her and had a son, Thenot’s brother Charlie. He was planning to stay in Germany, but Aunt Henrietta was getting older, so in 1951, Thenot’s father moved back to the United States to help her take care of her business, Concrete Masonry in New Miami.

“He went to work for her, but when she passed away, he decided to get back into the denture scene,” Thenot said.

His first lab was on High Street in the mid-1950s, then in 1961 he bought a small building on Edgewood Avenue on Hamilton’s West Side.

Thenot started working in the lab after school starting around 1975 and began learning the trade.

“My dad was a very strict person,” Thenot said. “You did things his way and only his way.”

But as they say, you can’t argue with success.

“We have people coming in here who have kept the same teeth for too long, really, because they’re so well-made,” said Thenot’s wife, Darleena.

In 2000, the Thenots bought the building next door, which had been the Avalon Bar.

“It was going to seed, so we bought the building to basically keep up the neighborhood,” Darleena said.

They restored the building, moved their lab to the larger space and Darleena opened Edgewood Salon in the old building.

The process of making dentures begins with taking an impression of the client’s gums and the creation of acrylic models that require two periods of cooking and curing. Thenot purchases the teeth separately and sets them in individually by hand.

“There’s a whole lot of artistry involved,” Thenot said, “and a lot of care to make sure that there’s a proper bite and teeth of the right length.

“But it’s not fancy, that’s for sure,” he said as he demonstrated a hydraulic press that his father made back in the ’50s, still working fine.

“I’ve tried new ways, but it never seems to work out, so I go back to the way I’ve been doing it, taking my time with it,” he said. “Even some of the new tools you buy end up breaking, so you go back to the old ones.”

In addition to the old ways of making dentures, there’s also an old way of doing business that has served the Thenot family well.

“We get a lot of people coming in who say they have gone to other places and they feel like a number,” Darleena said. “Some of them take them into a room and do a sales pitch, but even though we still do it all by hand, our prices are still better.”