What are excavators?

Excavators remove soft, carious dentine with a sharpened spoon or claw-shaped blade. Hand excavation is deliberately less aggressive than a bur, which is why it remains the technique of choice near the pulp and in selective caries removal — the instrument gives tactile discrimination between soft infected dentine and firmer affected dentine that a rotary instrument does not.

How the excavators range is organised

Spoon, by size:

#17 small, #18 medium, #19 with a 2mm spoon, and #3 — available in solid, hollow and firm-grip handles.

Double-ended spoon:

#38/39, #61/62, #31L and #33L.

Cleoid-discoid:

#3/6 and #89/92 — a claw and a disc for carving as well as excavating.

Other:

#14, #22, oval English pattern #22, and a set of five covering #14, #17, #18, #19 and #38/39.

Choosing the right excavator

Match the spoon diameter to the lesion — a spoon wider than the cavity cannot reach the walls, and one much smaller takes several passes where one would do. The set of five is the efficient way to cover the common sizes. Cleoid-discoid patterns do double duty for amalgam carving. Excavators must be kept sharp: a blunt spoon pushes soft dentine ahead of it rather than lifting it, which is how a pulp gets exposed.