Well depending on your climate (ie cold winters) you can make firelighters out of the old dirty wax. Following that we are not using chemicals, and that all that should end up in the wax pot is a little dirt and refined paraffin and a touch of tasty tungsten, when I have an old batch, I take a silicone ice cube tray and fill each compartment with small wood chips and sawdust, then heat up the wax and pour it in each compartment. When it sets you have some really powerful firelighters which are just rustic candles, or if you are camping, each cube burns for more than 15 minutes making it awesome to heat a tin of beans or with the right setup, heat a cup of water for a coffee/hot chocolate or tea.
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Boiling water rinse until the water after each rinse is totally clean (3 or 4 for my filthy dusty off-road chains) then dry with heat gun on low or hairdryer (I know you have one in your shed) not too hot or you can burn the wax which alters it’s adhesive properties, then into whatever wax you like. This is next level clean and even if you don’t dry the chain (I don’t) after 10 mins in 90-100 Celsius wax that water is gone for absolute. If not it’s heavier than wax so will harmlessly sink to the bottom to evaporate next time. Always pull the chain above 95 Celsius and you will save so much wax. 15-25 grams of wax extra on the chain at 75deg and after 20km the chain loses it. No change in longevity pulling at 100deg.
Wax on wax off!
Yeah I do, though I just use SILCA super secret in both but one is a dirty or first wax pot and the second is clean with endurance chips. I clean with boiling water then Start in the dirty then move to the clean but keep the temp between 90 and 100 Celsius for best penetration and not wasting flakey wax. The dirty one also has the occasional strip chip chucked in when I do a new chain. I do a few new ones at a time and use the silca chain stripper first then the strip chip as a double bonus backup in case there is any factory grease left. Absolutely overkill but I have a gravel bike with 35000 km on it and have not changed any moving parts yet. Both the chains I rotate are sub 0.25% wear measured with LL tool and digital calipers.
Unfortunately the term “wax” as used in cycling has little to no relationship with the term as used in chemistry.
With the latter you don’t need to worry about disposal but that’s not what we are talking about.
With the former, assume it’s an environmentally hazardous petrochemical and treat it appropriately: your local government authority probably maintains a facility for disposing of similar wastes (eg sump oil) so just use that.
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In the US, a person can call their waste removal service/company or their local government’s sanitation/recycling department to find out how to get rid of the wax. It’s easy to do and helps to ensure that ingredients in that wax don’t become a problem in the environment in the future.
Yeah, methyl alcohol is how you go blind from bathtub gin.
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I didn’t see Adam Rice’s post. You don’t need to worry about methanol in methylated spirits: that formulation hasn’t been used for decades. In Australia at least it is available to industrial users only and comes with usage restrictions.
The product sold as methylated spirits is ethanol at the azeotropic concentration (96%) with a small amount of methyl isobutyl ketone and denatonium benzoate AKA bitrex. The name derives from its use to denature alcohol and because the proper name is benzyl-[2-(2,6-dimethylanilino)-2-oxoethyl]-diethylazanium benzoate which is a mouthful even by organic chemistry standards.
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I am wondering if anyone has used the new Ceramic Speed UFO Ultra Endurance wax Starter kit?.
Supposedly you can wax your chain without a crockpot using that.
One unexpected wrinkle - sizing the chain. Had to buy a chain breaker tool and used the Park Tool YouTube to guide me through it. But an important part of the process.
I’m about 175km into a fresh RexWax and loving it.
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Can waxing a chain then applying a drip wax help with longevity?
I’ve got a very wet and sandy gravel race on Sunday. Just curious if I can help my chain and myself.
For sure you can. But if it was me, I’d clean off that chain more rigorously, on account of the dirt and debris that works have accumulates on the chain, especially since some drip on wax cab tend to be a little stickier.
Been scanning the wiki and elsewhere and not seen any mention of how to do an initial wax with a fresh chain, super secret wax, strip chip and endurance chip all at the same time. SILCA say the two chips are compatible. Has anyone come across any such ‘recipe’?
My initial thought is to start with just the strip chip at 125 as stated and leave it for 10 minutes. Then add the endurance chip once you start dropping the temp (due to the lower temp stated on the directions for the endurance chip), but not sure if adding the puck while the chain is in the wax would be problematic.
Does anyone have actual experience with this combination or recommendations?
Cheers!
To follow up on this, I reached out to SILCA too and they’ve confirmed both additives can be added at the start without needing to faff with multiple additions or temps, if it’s helpful to anyone else.
As for the quantity of each wax to start with in your pot: 250g of Secret Chain Blend, 1 EnduranceChip, and 1 square of StripChip is perfect; this will get you roughly 700km of riding between waxes. You can put in all three waxes at the same time and turn the pot to 125c. You will follow the instructions for StripChip, and you will get the full benefits from all the additives.
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according the the instructions on the endurance chip you heat to 95 C . place the chain into the pot. swivel for 5 minutes. reduce to 75C. once the 75C is set . remove the chain.
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This is what I wasn’t sure about, I didn’t know if heating the endurance chip to the higher temperature required by the strip chip would damage the molecular chains that provide the endurance chip is longevity. At least according to the reply I received from SILCA, the two can be added at the same time using the higher of the two temperatures.
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I just added a clarification to the ‘pull chain at lower temp’ item. ZFC says no — https://zerofrictioncycling.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Wax-Temp-Debate.pdf
You can just also pull the chain at 95 degrees. Follow the instructions if you feel it’s best but pulling the chain at 95 will leave a perfectly fine amount of wax in the chain.
I use both and can confirm it’s fine. Going above 125 isn’t recommended, that’s around the upper limit of the waxes in general (within some margin of error I guess) but strip chip + wax + additives all work together, at least across Silcas line.
One single pot of wax does have some limit on the number of times you can use a strip chip in it with a new chain, if you’re waxing a fleet of bikes that might be a consideration. For a single bike and chain the wax will be contaminated with grit from the rewaxing long before you’ve gone through the required number of strip chip cycles. The strip chip chemical reacts with the factory grease to convert it to a wax-like or wax-compatible substance, but too much of that in a single small pot of wax eventually overwhelms it.