Has anybody bought the Silca wax pot?

£100 quid for a slow cooker. Or am I missing something??

I think it has temperature control built in, so you don’t overcook it. I can see the benefits for racers etc for convenience.

A £12 Argos slow cooker plus a cheap eBay thermometer does me just fine.

There are customer reviewa on Sigma Sports, so yes.

I can see the attraction of an out of the box system for someone who wants waxing but doesn’t want waxing to be a research and experimentation hobby in itself. To some people that’ll be worth it.

You can get wax melters in the beauty section of Amazon, they are used for leg etc wax, apparently. Not sure if the right size for chains though.

It’s like anything else – you can bodge, but if you want to spend more then you can get something specifically designed for the job and it’ll be better.  Wether or not it’s worth the cash is entirely up to you and your budget.

I’ve been swithering. One of the bikes I’d use it for would be on an indoor trainer. Does anyone have experience of waxed chains indoors? I’m particularly thinking about how much wax gets thrown off onto the floor (though the trainer is on a mat).

I’ve been swithering. One of the bikes I’d use it for would be on an indoor trainer. Does anyone have experience of waxed chains indoors? I’m particularly thinking about how much wax gets thrown off onto the floor (though the trainer is on a mat).

Not since going to a direct drive trainer. But my old wheel on trainer would leave two stripes over the winter, one black one from the tyre and a lighter white one from the chain.  But it’s minimal, only visible because it was on a black mat for months. I doubt it would have shown up on anything else.  The new turbo I just bought a cheap cassette and chain to run on it and left the factory grease on.

My DFF died a few months ago and the putoline was pretty ropey (the new tin was far softer than the stuff I bought 15 years ago) so I’ve just ordered a kilo of wax and sachets of WS2 and PTFE, time to get experimenting………

Argos small fryer has thermostat/temp control, basket, and costs less than £15.

Argos small fryer has thermostat/temp control, basket, and costs less than £15.

I had one of those, or similar at least.

Even if the element is embedded in the base of the bowl rather than the submerged kettle type, the base still gets significantly hotter than the bulk of the fluid and the thermostat is presumably somewhere up the side away from the element to try and measure the oil temp rather than the element temp.  My putoline would sit there steaming/smoking away for the first 10 minutes as the oil got hot on the base while the was stayed solid on top even when the thermostat was set to 70-80C.  Maybe it would work if someone made a similar designed but better/thicker pan from copper, but that would cost a lot more than £15.

Slow cookers solve that problem by using a similar design, but the element is 100-150W rather than 700-800W so the wax melts slower and more evenly.

I guess you need to use it fully to see the benefits, there’ll be features that are more specific to chain waxing than just throwing it in a crock pot.

Though I’m not sure what, I do the latter and it’s difficult to see how it could be any easier.

I think the main point is for use with the strip chip where you need to reach and maintain 125°C without over heating the wax.

The normal 75°C-ish process is fine in a Crockpot

Not since going to a direct drive trainer. But my old wheel on trainer would leave two stripes over the winter, one black one from the tyre and a lighter white one from the chain.  But it’s minimal, only visible because it was on a black mat for months. I doubt it would have shown up on anything else.

Cool. I currently have a small trail of black oil on my red trainer mat. White might actually be easier (for my wife) to live with 🙂

Ah got it cheers, was aware it also degreased but didn’t know about the strip chip thing – adds a bit of value for me as stripping the factory wax off is the only tedious bit.

Agree that the stripping is tedious but my opinion is that you clean out more of the manufacturing residue with a solvent flush. As you only need to do that once per chain, I don’t mind too much. If I want to thoroughly strip a waxed chain, I’ll boil it to melt the wax off.

I think the main point is for use with the strip chip where you need to reach and maintain 125°C without over heating the wax.

Yep, that’s how I understand it. If you’re not going to use the strip chip stuff, it seems like a very expensive, albeit neat, alternative to a cheap 15-quid crockpot.

On the initial chain prep front, I revisited Zero Friction Cycling recently and he’s now suggesting that Ceramicspeed’s UFO drivetrain cleaner is a much easier option for cleaning factory grease from the chain than the whole repeated white spirit / IPA agitated soaking palaver.

Basically soak for 5 minutes or so in 100cc of the stuff, remove, rinse with hot water and you’re good to go. It’s very expensive stuff, but he’s successfully degreased five chains with the same 100cc of cleaner, so a 500ml bottle could conceivably do 25 chains, which makes it seem a bit more reasonable. Just bought some and am going to give it a go next time I change a chain.

I’ve been swithering. One of the bikes I’d use it for would be on an indoor trainer. Does anyone have experience of waxed chains indoors? I’m particularly thinking about how much wax gets thrown off onto the floor (though the trainer is on a mat).

Indoor training is literally the perfect use case for putoline IMO. It lasts for absolutely ages, and no fling or drip.

I wouldn’t bother with any more fancy/esoteric waxes indoors.

I sat on the fence for a few months, watched all the videos, looked at all the reviews and then bit the bullet a few weeks ago. I have used it on a new chain that came on a new bike, so used the strip chip and followed the instructions. Nice and straight forward and worked well. Chain is a bit noisy on bike as it kind of needs running in to remove alot of the surface wax. Fingers crossed it does what it says on the tin.

Its a bit messier if you wanted to wax a used chain.. but the videos make sense and easy to follow.

Reason I went for the Silca one, is due to the temp control being setup specifically for bike chains. It may be that temp isnt actually that important, but does sound (on face value) the Silca team did quite alot of research and testing, rather than just relabelling an OEM device and cheap stuff from China.

Only time will tell, but although expensive, its well made… the wax and strip chips will last a long time.

Will update once Ive done a few re-waxes etc.

Just a query about something it says on the Sigma Sport site, which I imagine is cut&pasted from Silca:

QUICK LINK
If your chain features a quick link, it is unsuitable for immersion in Hot Melt Wax. Instead, apply Silca Super Secret Wax Lube Chain Coating after installing the newly waxed chain

Presumably it means don’t immerse the quick link in wax, not tha the chain itself is unsuitable for use in the gadget ?

Yeah, I have more money than time to work out how to do the waxing thing on my own.

It works really well, I’m really happy with the results – chains are lasting over 500km between treatments (I’m waiting until it gets noisy to re-apply  – or more specifically swapping between chains).

Don’t wax your quicklinks. You can wax a chain you’re using with a quick link.

Pretty much answered here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8BbR-Py02o

Or alternatively, do wax your quicklinks, they’ll be fine (at least, it’s never caused me any issues in 4/5 years of waxing chains).

New to waxing (silca wax in argos slowcooker)

only issue found so far with waxing quicklink (separately)  is that it can be a faff to get it to seat enough to close… scraped wax off and now it’s fine.

[edit] started with slow cooker in case I didnt get on with waxing, but now cant see the need to spend another £100+ on a specific machine

The reason they say not to wax the quicklink is for safety. One of those things thats probably fine but a company is going to er on the side of caution and tell you not to do it. The quicklink is also going to be interfacing with a chain that has been waxed so there aren’t really any measurable difference I’d imagine from waxing to not waxing it.

The reason they say not to wax the quicklink is for safety. One of those things thats probably fine but a company is going to er on the side of caution and tell you not to do it.

I’ve always dipped the ends of the quick links in the wax. I’m guessing either they’re worried about burnt fingertips, quick links being difficult to re-attach, not encouraging the re-use of single use links.

I’m assuming no one makes quick links that are merely a press fit into the plate that might be impacted by temperature?

While we’re on the subject of quick links, who’s using theirs more than 5 times?!

I’m particularly thinking about how much wax gets thrown off onto the floor

It’s wax, it doesn’t go anywhere, that’s the point.

I reuse them a fair amount but I don’t count. If there’s an effort and noise to close the link, I’m happy. If they close without a click, they get replaced.

Pretty much what I do, sometimes wonder if I should be changing them more often!