I started waxing a year ago. I like it. I dis-like the faff. We all know there’s many elements of faff - stripping a new chain, drying a chain after a wet ride, stripping old wax from a chain, and then the actual waxing itself.
It’s the last one that’s the worst bit for me. I have a boggo cheap crockpot. If it was in the house in a consistent ambient temperature, I could use a timer. But it’s in the garage, anything from 5C to 25C. So I have to keep going back to it to check it with a meat thermometer to make sure it’s hot enough, but not too hot. Eurgh.
I want something I can just sit the chain on top of the solid wax, turn on, walk away and forget. Come back in 45 min or 8 hours, and it’s all good.
Catch is, the Silca one is tiny. I have 3 bikes in regular use (5 if I start doing my wife’s too), so I’d like to wax multiple chains at a time, 2 at the VERY least, and ideally 3-4. Ain’t no way, from what I’ve seen. Tiny tiny tiny.
I don’t think there’s any specific waxing products on the market that do what I’m after, but presumably someone out there makes a thing with a heating element and a thermostat? Anyone?
Or do I need to build one myself? HAS anyone built one themselves - any pointers appreciated!
(I know one of you is going to buy that and I’m going to regret posting that link…)
I’m unclear if it’d be suitable though - the “slow cook” option of it only has the standard low/medium/high options. The precise temperature control is restricted to the other cooking “modes”. Although quite how they work (or how the temp is measured) is unclear.
Might just need a new slow cooker from a different maker - and not even necessarily one that’s more expensive. ZFC is pretty confident that the ‘low’ setting on most of them should be a perfectly happy sweet spot temperature that you can forget about for days at a time and be perfectly fine.
That’s certainly how mine works, and it’s a basic supermarket branded generic one. Only times I’ve got close to too hot are when I put it on ‘high’ at the start to try to do the initial melt quicker and then forget I’ve done that. Josh said in one of his videos on the Silca melter that this is the most complicated/expensive aspect of their appliance - it’s got a higher tech heating system that is able to control heating ramp rates more intelligently than a standard slow cooker.
But if you don’t need that kind of speed/control (and, crucially, if you don’t need the really specific temps required for the strip chip), then a cheap slow cooker on low should be the exact set-and-forget system you’re describing.
If you’ve got issues with ambient temps affecting things then could the solution be as simple as buying a larger unit and putting more wax in at a time so you’ve got a bigger thermal mass? 2x or 3x wax should last almost-but-not-quite 2x or 3x as long as a single ‘portion’ in that setup, so it’s not like you’d need to spend significantly more on consumables in the long term.
Hmmm. Maybe I need to try putting mine on low and leaving it for multiple hours. 45min on low doesn’t do much, so I always put it to high and then have to turn it back down. But if 4 hours on low does the job, then that’s job jobbed.
(I’m using MSW rather than the forum’s preference of Silca, just because it was the one I heard of first. IIRC says it wants to be 93C and to be careful not to go too high with it, though I’ve seen some debate over whether going “too” hot actually matters or not)
Yep, just turn it on low with the lid on, remove the lid and stick the chain(s) in. On mine that gets me to high 80s/low 90s and no more, so it’s perfect.
Yeah I’m still on MSW too, mostly because I haven’t run out from the last time I bought it a few years ago.
ZFC says smokey/fuming is the warning sign, not the death knell. I think if you’ve damaged the wax it will go yellow-ish when it cools and hardens.
If you suspect the issue is a cold garage/workshop and low just isn’t working then maybe even worthwhile trying to insulate it very slightly - nothing in contact with the cooker itself, but I’m imagining some sheets of that metallic-lined bubble wrap or polystyrene kind of thing that you could use to make 3 walls and a lid to surround the cooker, leaving the front open to the air. Box cutter and parcel tape is all you’d need to put it together.
If the issue is breeze/draft then you might even get away with a surround made from basic cardboard or some scrap bits of plywood you’ve got lying around somewhere.
Or one of those disposable polystyrene coolers you get from the supermarket? Discard the lid and flip it over to use like a tea cozy (though I’m not sure if you’d need to ventillate it somewhow or not)?
I didn’t mean that the cold ambient meant it wouldn’t get to temp, just that I can’t experiment once and then set a timer to rely on in future - the time to get to 93C or whatever will vary with the seasons, by quite a bit.
There’s always something like this, I have one permanently in the wax. When I’m too lazy to just do the above of setting it to low and waiting, this will prevent the wax from getting too hot. Set to say 88-83 degrees, then just turn the pot on and walk away
I’ve moved on from my Silca pot - too small. I’m back to my medium crock and I put the cover on somewhat angled to let the heat out so it doesn’t get too hot. Works pretty good and once you figure out how open to leave to top, you can just come back in an hour and fine tune it.
Agree that stripping a new chain is a pain, but at least it’s only a pain once
For wet chain, I just give it a quick wipe and call it good enough. If I was storing my bike in a place where it was moist or wouldn’t dry pretty quick, maybe it would be a bigger concern.
I never strip old wax off a chain, it just gets a quick wipe before getting rewaxed. It will get the wax in the crockpot dirty a little faster, but wax is fairly cheap and not a big deal to swap it out periodically.
I use a regular medium sized crock pot for waxing, but I’m usually doing something else in the garage when I’m waxing chains, so not leaving it unattended for hours. 2 chains at a time in the crockpot and I’m usually waxing batches of 4-8 chains when it’s time to wax. I find that the medium setting on my crockpot keeps the wax at a reasonable temp if I have to leave it for a while (to grab dinner, etc.). But I’m also not worried about getting the temp exact. I don’t want the wax cooking/smoking, but otherwise I’m good as long as it’s melted. I’ve been waxing for many years and in my experience, good enough is good enough. It might be better to strip old wax every time and get the wax temp perfect, but I think most of that is noise.
I’ve got the US equivilant to what @alexgold123 linked. Set the high and low, throw the wax in the $15 mini pot, flip the switch and come back when the wax is at temp. Easy peasy. For me the temp control switch was the most expensive part of my setup. I even bought two mini pots. One for every day chains and one for race chains. Dirty everyday chains go in one, and stripped, cleaned, dried go into the other.
FWIW I left my cheap-as-chips Crockpot on low today. After an hour or two it was exactly at 93C, perfect. I thought I’d leave it to see what it was an hour or two later… then had a really busy day and forgot all about it until now. 133C. Not perfect
I do believe there is an option to use the Silca wax container like a ‘sous vide’ system, but now you’ve given me an idea. I found a use for our Anova heater. (It’s never been a favorite since I bought it. It does work well, just takes a lot of time)
