Yeah it is more expensive compared to regular plaster. Although there is different kinds of dental plaster such as a blue kind (sorry I don't remember the name ) that gets so hard you need mason drill bits to drill it. When I worked as a dental tech we used several different kinds of these products one of the cool tricks we used was grinding already set plaster and then mixxing it with water then used that base to speed up curing. I remember that sometimes it would set so fast that my mixing spatula got stuck in it before i was done mixing LOL. good luck man