I make my own wax from entirely renewable botanical materials, do multiple chains at once and use a small chafing dish to reduce the quantity of wax used per session. By the time I do another session I am probably experimenting with a new wax formulation so I start afresh. Also I have lots of the materials on hand: the most expensive ingredient is Jojoba wax and I buy that by the kilo because it’s even more expensive in small lots.
Another consideration is that I pretreat the clean chain with a graphene dopant of my own devising and I am making sure I don’t get the graphene into the chain wax since this has been shown not to work. FWIW 10 grams of graphene cost several times as much as all the other ingredients put together.
You don’t have to hot melt wax. The current generation of drip waxes are very good. I tend to mostly drip wax and do a full hot melt every now and then. I would say hot melt lasts slightly longer, runs slightly cleaner, and probably works out slightly cheaper in the long run. But all of those are minor differences, and I think it’s a reasonable position to say they are not worth the extra hassle. I think this was discussed in the geek warning podcast a few weeks ago and they came to a similar conclusion.
Have a read of How to Chain Wax - The Wiki for some broader info on the pros and cons of both approaches. It’s essentially personal preference at this point with fairly minor differences between the two options. A large factor can be the space you have in your house. For example, I probably wouldn’t primarily immersion wax if I didn’t have a garage with a useful bench for that sort of thing.
I agree with @jasedepuit … it’s a fairly personal decision. For me, I have a small pot for the wax - it’s for leg wax, but works fine for chains - so it doesn’t take up too much space on my workbench. And I do use drip wax for a top up when I’m travelling. But at least for me, I find the immersion wax lasts just a little longer and stays a little cleaner. That said, if I lost my wax pot, I’d never go back to oil based lubricants!
The wax development was a by product of a merchandising effort for Lyrebird before its demise: I have a strong interest in water chemistry and solvent chemistry so I developed a really effective bio based degreaser and expanded from there. In keeping with making wooden bikes, the whole ethos was to minimise petrochemicals and environmental impact so paraffin was out from the get go.
Two “f”s by the way, same root as affinity (affinitat, latin for kinship (especially by marriage)).
So I noticed my chain post hot wax started getting less hard. Which—when I’m just using it on my indoor trainer—meant to me that the wax is become less effective, so I swapped. What I found was: it seemed all of the contaminants were stuck to the bottom of the post (as all the wax poured out easy and then there was black sticky goo all over the bottom that I needed to wipe out with a paper towel). So: not sure why the chain started getting less hard post wax as it seemed like all of the contaminants were contained?
Maybe you didn’t get all the contaminants out? Once I got the block of wax out, there was a bunch of dark, gooky stuff on the bottom of the block I scraped off. There was also some nasty stuff in the bottom of the pot I wiped out.
Sorry, I should have been more clear: I get the pot totally wiped clean every time (well, I’m not chemically cleaning it, but am doing multiple paper towel wipes until no visible wax remaining). And now after latest replacement, chain back to being hard post wax. I’m just surprised I saw any degradation in hardness when it seems all of the contaminants stick to the bottom of the pot—I guess the wax itself might just become less effective over time?
Surely all those contaminants get stirred up every time you agitate the chain, so the buildup will eventually degrade the wax on the chain. Zero Friction’s 2 pot solution mitigates that - one pot which heats the chain so that wax + contaminants drop to the bottom, then without agitating it move the chain to the second pot to do the agitation part. Keeps the second pot much cleaner, but eventually that becomes the first pot and a new clean wax is put in the second.
I specifically asked this question beneath a Silca video. How do you tell when the wax in the pot needs changing? Hopefully they’ll answer sometime.
Like @Nick_cooke I just top it up when it seems like the pot could be topped up. However a few months ago I started using the Silca endurance chip additive. Now if I’m topping it up, I’m diluting the mix of the two to some point. Surely there must be some sort of expected number of chains that a given volume of wax can or should endure?
I work in a shop that does between 250-300 chains a year. Most likely a tad more than your average individual. We alway dip clean chains. We have an industrial parts washer that strips thing down really well so thats a big plus. If it’s a new chain it’s run through the parts washer then dipped in Silca stripper. If its a re-dip we run it through the parts washer. We simply keep topping off the wax through the season then start fresh at the first of the year. Thats off season here in the NE USA. We don’t use any additives in the wax, e.g., endurance or strip chips. After 3 plus years of doing it this way it is working fine. Probably not the answer for the home mechanic but the take away is dip chains that are as clean as possible. Don’t over heat you wax or leave it on longer than needed. Had a mechanic leave a pot on over night once. Not pretty. Another thing is getting your wax temp correct. Every time we get a new cheapo pot we have to recalibrate. Make sure you don’t pull the chain until the chain temp is the same as the wax temp. You won’t waste wax and you will get a good coating without excess build.
First, thanks to all the great input here. Based on what I’ve experienced and this information, I have a couple working conclusions/theories:
Occasionally scraping the bottom of the wax block and wiping out the pot is a good idea to get rid of contaminants.
The block can be effectively removed if the pot and wax are completely cooled. I was able to tap mine out after it had sat in my somewhat cool garage/workshop for a few hours… slid out cleanly.
Additives such as endurance or speed chips should be added proportionately to topping off the wax.
Wholesale replacement of the wax does not need to happen too often for the standard rider… unless you are actually waxing a chain once a day.
I really appreciate all the comments. Gotta love the EC community!!
Complete change maybe once every three years or so (somewhere in the 30–50000 km range), continuous top-ups as needed when the batch isn’t enough to treat four chains at once. Basically when the wax starts to look dirty or something, but of course I don’t really bother with cleaning the chains before waxing unless they are unusually filthy.
Silca tips and tricks are good but all too conveniently require regular changing of wax and replacing with new wax. This is born out by their suggestion to pull the chain at lower temps (70degC) which independent testing shows just leaves more wax on the chain which flakes off quickly leaving about the same wax as pulling at a higher temp (95 degrees C). Drip wax is good to use to extend the use of a chain if immersion isn’t possible but my own experience is that this is a much dirtier form of lubrication. I have found using boiling water to strip the chain prior to rewaxing in the pot gets rid of most of the dirt or contaminants (2 or three rinses is plenty even for the dirtiest chain) the re wax as normal. Occasionally a top up of the wax is needed to keep the level up but i find no significant contamination of the wax though i do use a two pot system and the second pot is always clean. Do not clean the black stuff out of the pot as that is usually the tungsten disulfide additive for enhancing lubrication. I hope this helps but heaps of the old geek warning podcasts will back all this up and a visit to the zero friction cycling site is always a no nonsense way of finding out more about all things lubrication, just allow plenty if time to digest the excellent thoroughness you will find within. Cheers, and good luck.
Reinforcing this summary! I think a lot of the prior comments are confusing the additives that settle on the bottom for dirt. I noticed after trying Rex that their additives settle far more aggressively than Silca and it was pretty obvious because I had only done a couple of well cleaned chains.
As far as swapping waxes goes, I have been having good luck dropping a piece of string into the pot, letting it cool, then pulling the puck as the pot warms back up. I use the Silca pot which is extremely inconvenient to try pouring liquid wax from or even moving the pot around at all since the cord is permanently attached.
Anyone else use a magnet to clean out contaminants from the pot of melted wax? I was concerned it was the additives in Silca, but they assured me tungsten disulphide is not magnetic. So I hope it’s mostly metal crud coming out with the magnet as a black sludge. Seems to work well.
