Hot Wax Curious

Ah cool, then I think the accepted wisdom is no need to degrease for Putoline, I certainly never have and got great results

Cool, one less step to have to do.

Which given how much I’m bodging other steps on this rebuild, is a good thing!

I never used to de-grease mine, but then I washed a new chain in white spirit and completely unscientifically it seemed to last a little better. Perhaps the white spirit acted as a kind of flux for the wax? Dunno.

Ok.  First chains going into Silca wax.

What neither the Silca or ZFC instructions seem to cover is rewaxing them.

1) You’ve ridden the bike through a few filthy rides and it feels like it needs lubing – how do you prepare it before dipping it in your currently lovely clean wax?

2) how do you determine when your wax is ‘done’?  presumably the level drops as you wax some chains and you keep topping it up, but you’re also getting it dirty when rewaxing.  At what point do you scrape it all out and start afresh?

1) You’ve ridden the bike through a few filthy rides and it feels like it needs lubing – how do you prepare it before dipping it in your currently lovely clean wax?

Even if I’ve been riding through crap the chain is usually pretty clean. If it’s got some surface grime then I’ll rinse it with boiling water in a jar a few times, wipe it a bit then leave it to dry overnight.

2) how do you determine when your wax is ‘done’? presumably the level drops as you wax some chains and you keep topping it up, but you’re also getting it dirty when rewaxing. At what point do you scrape it all out and start afresh?

No idea. My next batch of MSW will be my third and I’ve not noticed any change in the wax.

you’re also getting it dirty

Are you really?

A dirty chain can only add water, which will evaporate from the hot wax, or solid particles which will drop to the bottom of the DFF. If you use the suspended  basket in the DFF the solids will stay on the bottom and not make the wax dirty.

What other “dirt” is there?

That is my slight confusion – ZFC instructions recommend boiling water/compressed air/hair dryer or heat gun to get all the water out of the chain.  Surely easiest just to start the wax at 100C and boil off any water in the chain in the wax?

They also strongly advise not starting with a pre-used ‘dirty’ chain – “it’s common to use 3l of solvent to fully clean a chain that has been ridden”, “check after the final rinse the chain is feeling silky smooth – if it feels gritty repeat cleaning”, “if the clean is not so great you risk contaminating your entire pot of wax”

But once you’ve ridden a waxed chain surely you’re going to contaminate your pot of wax with greasy road grime or off road filth when you redip it?

Silca recommend using either their gear wipes or biodegreaser if your chain is dirty with a top up of their super secret drip lube. If you want to rewax in their crock pot they also suggest boiling the chain in water for a few minutes to remove the crud. with a quick wipe down afterwards. Chain doesn’t have to be bone dry before immersion. Their YT videos are good for all this stuff. Personally I ignore the ZFC stuff (and any others), I use Silca therefore I run with their recommendations. HTH

1) You’ve ridden the bike through a few filthy rides and it feels like it needs lubing – how do you prepare it before dipping it in your currently lovely clean wax?

What I do is swish it in boiling water a couple of times in a saucepan – I don’t like the idea of messing about with boiling water in a glass jar – then dry the wet chain with a hair drier on full blast for a couple of minutes while it’s sat in a foil takeway tray, then re-wax it.

I figure the possible issue with waxing a wet chain is that every time you heat the wax to a high-ish temperature, it degrades a little.

With road chains/dry ride ones, I’m not particularly fussy, if it’s dusty I’ll maybe rinse it under a hot tap then dry as above.

But once you’ve ridden a waxed chain surely you’re going to contaminate your pot of wax with greasy road grime or off road filth when you redip it?

I think the contamination from pre-used chains that ZFC are worried about is oil, which risks degrading the wax, rather than fine dirt. With dirt, if there’s a little in there, it’ll sink to the bottom of the wax I think.  If the chain’s really dirty I just wash it in boiling water as above. I cleaned a used chain for waxing once, it took ages. Just not worth the effort imo unless it’s only been used a couple of times.

My other tip is to avoid hollow pin chains. They trap wax inside the pins, so you use more wax. Or you can poke it out when dry with a very small allen key and put it back in the pot. There’s a surprising amount comes out of a full chain, but it’s a hassle to do.

I think it’s one of those areas where perfect is the enemy of good. You can get obsessive about the whole process, but by doing that you just make more hassle in exchange for relatively small gains. Admittedly ZFC tends towards the myopically meticulous, which is a shame, as in essence the whole process is quite simple.

Ah yes, for reference the Silca blog

https://silca.cc/en-gb/blogs/silca/chain-waxing-system-and-stripchip-faq

I think it’s one of those areas where perfect is the enemy of good. You can get obsessive about the whole process, but by doing that you just make more hassle in exchange for relatively small gains.

Totally this. Way, way too much over think and over faff in this thread.

Maybe if you’re chasing every last watt on the road it matters.

Half the point of this is for it to be simple and to be cheap and all the above analysis paralysis and pissing about is counter to that.

To me, based on my experience as a mid pack mtber, is that all this anal prep stuff almost completely does not matter once the chain has been through the process a couple of times.

Get a couple of chains. Have a bit of a go at degreasing  them if you must (but it’s not going to matter once they’ve been through the process a couple of times anyway).

Stick em in the wax and wipe them off.

Ride them and rotate them.

See what you think and go from there.

Half the point of this is for it to be simple and to be cheap and all the above analysis paralysis and pissing about is counter to that.

Yes.

Cheers for the recipe el_Bouf. I will probably clear out the putoline from my crock pot this weekend and have a go at home-brewed wax again.

I never used to de-grease mine, but then I washed a new chain in white spirit and completely unscientifically it seemed to last a little better. Perhaps the white spirit acted as a kind of flux for the wax? Dunno.

I 2nd this anecdotally.  The factory grease doesn’t play well with the wax for some reason.

1) You’ve ridden the bike through a few filthy rides and it feels like it needs lubing – how do you prepare it before dipping it in your currently lovely clean wax?

Personally I don’t, I just throw it in and assume the crap gets diluted to insignificance in the molten wax.  But I’m curious to try what others have suggested and clean the chain in boiling water.

2) how do you determine when your wax is ‘done’?  presumably the level drops as you wax some chains and you keep topping it up, but you’re also getting it dirty when rewaxing.  At what point do you scrape it all out and start afresh?

My first batch of putoline went yellow in the end.  I presumed it was the paraffin separating into a layer on top of whatever the darker stuff was.

My new wax is homebrew (paraffin + PTFE + WS2),  I’ll see how it goes. but I doubt there’s enough grit on even a few years worth of chains to make a detrimental concentration in the pot. And in terms of how much wax is used each time it’s tiny (about the same amount as you’d use wet lube).  So even if it’s 1-2g per chain, that’s probably still 200+ waxes before the level drops to about 1/3 and doesn’t quite cover the chain in the pot, probably 50,000miles worth of riding?

Yep, waxed chains don’t get dirty the same way drip lines chains do. Can’t remember the last time I had to boil-rinse a road chain but the gravel chain has had it a couple of times after particularly filthy rides.

I took my chain off at about 300km on the road bike and dropped it in boiling water, the small amount of dirt on it just lifted off.   (each time I rode on Strava I private noted the cumulative distance since last wax)

Then dried it and popped back in the wax.

I don’t think it needed redoing, but I was cleaning and waxing a couple of extra new chains and thought while the wax was hot, why not.

Once the initial cleaning factory grease faff of the new chain is done, this was a really easy thing to do.
2 bikes (one on a turbo so no real dirt there) and 4 chains between them.   Even swapping out at 300km each is a big time saver over actually cleaning, drying and lubing a wet lube chain when it gets dirty.

And the rewax can be done at the same time as other things, inside.   Pop it in, leave for 10 minutes doing something else, come back, swish around and then swap for another in the wax.    Instead of labour intensive chain cleaning, usually outside in the cold and dark (and rain).

So far, I’m a convert!