Axel.se

Found this thread when I was looking into how to make the MSW I have been using since summer work better during cold weather.

I was going to try the below mixture and first thought I should use a paraffin lamp oil so measured up 165g (have 370g of wax) of that oil and then decided that wait a minute this one is really runny maybe I should use the white mineral oil(also paraffin oil) for oiling cutting boards so measured 165g of that one and the cutting board oil was only 2/3 of the volume of the lamp oil for the same weight, so I wonder if you happens to know or are able to measure the volume of 200g (or any other weight) of the oil you have been using as different oils seem to differ massively in density?

I also thought that I might ask if you have done any other interesting discoveries regarding chain wax for winter use?

t1k

Hi Alex.
I'm glad that my chain wax experiments might be useful to you.

I still have some of the lamp oil left so I measured the volume of 200 g - its 250ml (I store the oil in a garage, so its temperature was at about 5C).





This is the lamp oil that I used. I could only find a scented one

t1k

I didn't do much experimenting with other paraffin waxes (mainly due to laziness and lack of practical need ... my current solution works well both in summer and winter)
One thing that I did is I split the mix in half and use only half of it for waxing ... to save time heating and cooling the wax. Even half of the mix is way to much if you waxing one chain at a time. A quarter of my original mix might be just the right amount.
When heated, the mix produces a light white vapor that has oily feel to it (when condenses on the crock pot lid). I was surprised to see the vapor because the pure paraffin did not produce any vapor when heated. Note that I use a crock pot to heat the wax so it's never overheated.

I've read a lot good reviews about the following wax mix:
- 1 part of paraffin (say 100g)
- 1 part of beeswax (100g)
- 0.2 part of motor oil (20g)

This mix, reportedly, has a good water resistance, one waxing lasts for 500 km and quiets a chain (comparing to pure paraffin). I couldn't find any information about the mix behavior in sub-zero temperatures. But the presence of the motor oil in it makes me think that it will work well in cold.
I'd like to test the mix but I don't have any motor oil and don't want to buy a whole jug just to use 20g

Axel.se

Hi T1k

Thanks allot for doing the measurements and for responding so quickly.

When I read the thread first I missed that it was a lam oil but thought when I was measuring that it had to have been some kind of massage oil as I don't think adding sent to a lamp oil will do much, so I decided to read again and did see that you mentioned that it was a lamp oil but it seems like it was really lucky that I asked about the volume as the lamp oil I have is allot thinner.

I did some calculations and the oil you used seem to have a density of 800 kg/m³
The lam oil that I first measured but decided that it was too light only have a density of 700 kg/m³ (176g 250ml)
The oil that I measured after that have a density of 830 kg/m³ (165g 200ml) so that one should be allot closer to the one you used so I will try with that one.

The 830kg/m³ one should also be fairly widely and easy available internationally as it is sold by IKEA as "SKYDD Wood treatment oil, indoor use" (skydd translates to protection) it is a oil sold primary for treatment of wood cutting boards (product number: 000.467.86) It is listed as a white mineral oil but it specify pure paraffin oil in the documents accompanying it.

ikea.com/ca/en/p/skydd-wood-treatment-oil-indoor-use-00046786/
ikea.com/us/en/p/skydd-wood-treatment-oil-indoor-use-00046786/


While I happen to be Swedish :-D I am primary linking to that as it is always useful to have a international available base line item that as many people as posible could get instead of all this mess of different types of paraffin/mineral oil that will result in widely different results when used (Though the bottles I happened to have at hand is several years old I doubt that they have changed anything bit it might be safest to check if anyone go and buy any of that).



Thank you again for helping me with the missing info, I am going to mix up a batch and report back how it works later this week.

P.S.
(had to remove the start of the web adress as I don't have enough post in the forum yet)

t1k

I like your scientific approach to making the wax mix. It makes sense, depending on the paraffin oil viscosity, the resulting wax will have different density and plasticity.

I didn't pay attention to the oil density when experimenting with the winter wax mix.
I followed the , and my first attempt failed miserably (the wax was too thin and didn't stick to metal well). That's when I started adding beeswax to the mix and arrived to a solution that works for me.

Thank you for the link. I wish I knew that wood treatment oil is actually paraffin based. Finding the paraffin lamp oil locally wasn't easy and I would prefer unscented oil to minimize the odor when waxing.
I do, however, like the chocolate color of the mix:



Just our of curiosity, what MSW issues are you trying to address with the new mix? Unreliable shifting and chain skipping?

A little advice: when you make the mix, start with less lamp oil - half of the amount and test the mix. You can always add more oil if needed.

Axel.se

​​​​​​Thank you, I have messed around a bit precisely with mixing different waxes and oils to change the general property of the resulting product.

Paraffin oils and waxes are actually used for all kinds of stuff just under allot of different names so it is hard to find exactly what is what.
Though it is worth noting that not all wood treatment oils are paraffin based, I would suspect that as good as all that are food grade for use on wood that touch food products are but it is a good to always check what they say it contains and what that actually is. mineral oil and white mineral oil almost by definition paraffin oils but in the end the definition is a complete mess and even jet fule is a paraffine.



From my understanding a wax oil mixture is somewhere between an a suspension and emulsion as while it might feel like the actually property of the resulting mixture changes in actuality the carbon chains of all the different oils and waxes are still present in their original length.

so in the end the result is a "suspension" of (from my limited understanding)
Paraffin oil C10-18H12-20
Paraffin wax C18-36H40-74
The beeswax C46H92O2 (that is the majority component but beeswax contain allot of stuff and even some Alkanes/paraffine components)

To actually get a 100% repeatable recipe it would have been nice to know the exact components of the oils and waxes but it is not necessary to get that exact for our purpose so the above approximations should be good enough.


I found that video a while ago but it was allot easier and faster to source the MSW then the components so I decided to try a commercial product first too have a baseline if I decided to do future experiments with different mixtures for wax lubrication of chains, I think that he mentioned that the addition of lamp oil was only necessary in colder climate.




Nether actually, the problem I have had have mostly been that the chain have needed to be re-waxed after just a week of riding to work and back (about 25km total each day) compared to 3-4 weeks during the end of summer and early fall.

From how I understand the wax as a lubricant should work:
The wax in solid form would not seems like it should work terrible well as a lubricant in general but the initial friktion and pressure in the links while the chain is moving it will temporary liquefy and provide lubrication and then re-solify when the chain stopp moving even in solid form it do provide a protective layer but one that could would wear off rather fast. (a bit like a ice skate actually melt the ice under from the presure of the ice skater and it crate a super thin layer of water and that is what you glide on not on the actuall ice itself.)
So the problem when it is too cold is that the friction and pressure is not enough to liquefy the wax so it just get pressed to the sides and leave the links unlubricated.
So lowering the melting point should make it perform better during winter.

Mixing beeswax should have the positive effect of adding a a long chain hydrocarbon in suspension so that the beeswax can really adhere to the metal and provide long time lubrication. This might sound paradoxical but as the beeswax is in a suspension and not in a pure form it won't create clumps that would easely be pushed to the side but the beeswax will add a thin layer of individual molecules on the mettal that act more like a oil would then like a pure wax. It also have the added positive that beeswax is almost impossible to completely remove especially if you have it in a heated suspension and spill it on something, you can easy remove everything else but you basically need to boil the thing you spilled on to make sure to actually get rid of all the beeswax from the thing you spilled it on.



Thank you for the tip, I had already made the mixture when when I saw your latest post.
The result seem to have turned out really well, it is still rather soft and pliable but not in any way sticky at indoor room temperatures. and even when frozen to -20C it still don't become completely solid but are slightly pliable, in comparison to the regular MSW that turns complete solid at room temperature.
But if I redid it I think that I could get a bit better result with 60-80% oil instead of the full 165g and maybe a bit more beeswax (something like 370g MSW, 150g oil, 150g beeswax.)

I also think I will see if I can make a mixture to get a bit better result during the summer. (something like 370g MSW, 50-100g oil, 150g beeswax) I think that might create a product that might should work a bit longer then regular MSW.


Getting a good working result is as good as result as any to stop experimenting

I am not so sure about the motor oil recipe, sure motor oils are made to stay liquid at really low temperature and provide initial lubrication when you start the motor in cold weather but they are also mainly made to work at rather high temperature as the motor heats up really fast and long time performance while running is more important then long time performance during startup, and that is before all the additives that are/can/could be added to motor oil to change the properties in all kind of ways and it would be inposible to recrate any recipe with the same result unless you can get te exact same motor oil.
But in the end I am also in the situation to not having no need to get motor oil in general so getting a jug for that small amount would just feel wasteful.

Axel.se

I also feels like I need to adress this post even if it was quite a while since that it was posted:
While it is correct that a chain is a machine, Saying that they need to be oiled is 100% incorrect, a machine (a chain) need to be lubricated, but it exist a wider range of different lubrications that don't use any oil or oil compounds at all, everything from ablative lubricants and other dry lubricants to soapified products like lithium greases that might have oil used in the manufacture are actually closer to the liquid soap you use to wash your hands then a regular lubricating oil. And saying that wax is not a lube is not true as allot of wax compounds and wax containing compounds are used as lube for all kinds of purposes.

In the end everything depends on how the lubricating agent act under the specific circumstances it need to work, everything about the lubricant to be modified to fit for that specific purpose.
This is where basically any and all bike chain oil/lubricants fail massively, a bike chain need lubrication but it is also not usually protected from dust and particles and are used in a unusually dusty environment where the dust are rather harsh as the road dust are mainly soil derived minerals quartz averaging 40–50% and remainder being clay forming minerals of albite, microcline, chlorite and muscovite originating from surrounding soils. (this will of cores differ depending on the exact composition of the surrounding soil and the road surface.)
All of those except two having a hardness comparable with steel if not higher so in the end road dust would be useful as a polishing compound or sandpaper for steal. So the highest priority for any bike chain lube should be to keep the chain free from road dust as the build up of road dust will wear the chain out as fast if not faster then if you just run the chain 100% without any lubricant as a steal to steal surface have a rather low friction by itself, but instead of manufacturing thin film lubricants everyone seem set on making thick and sticky products that work as better as a dust magnet then as a lubricant.

Using a wax crates a protective surface over the metal and instead of basically attracting dust it let the dust just blow off or rinse off while riding as the only part of the lubricant that even need to be close to a liquid state is the small amount in that is actually in under load making it so it takes longer for any dust to build up and for any particles to work themselves into the links where they will do damage.
While I do think that products that are better then wax could be made I don't have ether the knowledge or equipment to make something like that but I can comfortable say that any chain lube that do not ""dry"" to a complete none sticky surface rather quickly are not suitable for for use in regular bikes


If anyone know of bike chain lubes that dry completely on the chain and don't attract dust I would be happy for all suggestions as even what lube manufacturer call "dry" lube are still a sticky mess instead of the "dry film" lubricant that you expect from how the word "dry" is used regarding as good as all other lubricating products.

drlogik 

I read through a few of the comments here and here's my take being an ex cross-country ski racer up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where it gets very cold also.

Waxes are not created equal. Back in the day when I raced we had a wax kit that included kick waxes and glide waxes for every temperature range and snow condition. The only bearing this has on a bike chain is the cold temperature and how that wax reacts to that temperature.

Generally speaking I do believe that paraffin wax alone does an admirable job of lubricating a chain in hot to moderate temperatures. It's been done for decades with great results. Add in some extra lubricating agents, such as extremely fine powdered Molybdenum Disulfide ("moly"), and it's even better. That's what I use. I've been waxing chains for years and get literally years out of some chains.

One thing that paraffin doesn't do well is remain malleable at temps below, say, 20 degrees f. This would "probably" translate to a wax that figuratively "freezes" and the links won't move as well...hence the chain starts to skip. Have I tested this? No. I don't live in a cold climate any more or I would test this out.

Here is a suggestion, and it sounds odd, but heck, we are a creative bunch and express a lot of ingenuity here. Go to your nearest cross country ski shop and get some GLIDE wax rated for temps under 14 degrees f, or the temperature range that you will experience. Melt that into a chain and see how it works.

Cross Country glide wax's main ingredient used to be paraffin, probably still is, I'm not sure though. They add various micro-crystalline additives to it to get it to work at various temperature ranges. If I still lived in the UP, I'd probably try a polar-rated glide wax if the temps got down into the low single digits, and maybe add a little bit of 5w - 30 motor oil, or more moly.

One trick my coach taught me was when it got below 0 degrees f, we used spray Pledge as glide wax. That's right, Pledge, as in the stuff for furniture. It worked GREAT!

Thoughts from the gallery?


--

79pmooney

There's another approach entirely for good riding in conditions where chain link lubrication is iffy, but it is a major change. Might even require a brain transplant to work. Put this geared bike aside and set up a winter/beater fix gear.

I rode year 'round in the '70s. A racer, no car. Set up my oldest bike as a fix gear at the (rather strong) suggestion of several club veterans to improve my pedaling style. Heard along the way that fix gears did better on snow and ice so I kept riding it into the winter. Yes, it was better! But the salted roads (Boston) played havoc with the chain. (All outside faucets were long since shut off and cleaning that mess inside was NOT welcome!) Links froze. So I slide the wheel forward to put slack back into the chain and guess what? The bike ran just fine. Noisy. Funky as could be. The frozen links were quite obvious at first glance.

I ran the chain doing nothing but moving the wheel until 3 links froze. Then it was lube time, ride and repeat. New chain. cogs and ring if needed in the spring.

Now, I believe you don't have salt. I doubt you would ever get the total link freeze I saw. But I'll bet that the stiff inks from very cold wax will be far less of an issue running over a fixed cog or a single speed (but not using a tensioner which would lead to the same issues as with derailleurs). This means a frame with horizontal dropouts (my preferance by far) or track ends. You might find that the optimum chain slack is a little more than usually recommended to account for links not straightening as well in the extreme cold.

Like I said before, this might require a brain transplant. It isn't for everyone. But there are other advantages also. If you have hills, fix gears are warmer, especially going down. Less maintenance. More workout per either mile or time on the bike. Big payoff come spring! (And there is nothing as good for smoothing out pedaling style; the gift that keeps on giving.)

I don't recommend going fix gear cold turkey in the middle of winter. Take it up in the summer so the reflexes are well trained before you hit the first slippery spot. But once trained, you will find that your reflexes now keep you upright when the rear tire starts to go. (It's like driving a standard transmission in the snow vs an automatic back before all this new drive control stuff.)

My other thought - running a chain through a derailleur in the dry and very cold? Isn't Tri-Flo just what you want. I doubt temperature makes any difference at all with that stuff and it picks up little dirt. Yes, it goes black right away and is not a clean look. But I would simply have and use a clean chain with TriFlo for the coldest months then take it off and set it aside for next year. (In the wet, you have to re-lube with it regularly but it sounds like that isn't your issue.)

Edit: I like that post above about the ski waxes! I knew the ritual but never did it. In my short XC skiing period, I quickly went to skate-skiing because I could skate! (But that was also part of my undoing. Did some proper hockey turns at speed. There isn't a faster way to face plant hard!) But to topic - as a skate-skier, all I wanted was fast. A good skate wax might be just what you want.

vespasianus

I agree with your thinking and it makes sense. I use parrafix wax on five of our bikes and think it is the bees knees. But I rarely see 40 degreed Fahrenheit let alone 20.

The idea of using a ski specific wax sounds great but it tends to be much more expensive than cheap old candle (parrafin) wax - negating one of the main benefits to a wax based approach - but there are plenty of temperature specific ski waxes out there.

Axel.se

I was thinking about how ski wax might work too, but I am not sure that it would work. As far as I know they are carefully formulated more for hydrophobic properties and rather low pressure, instead of actually working as a classical lubricant. (it most also have a function in filling in scratches and holes under the ski.
Pledge seem to be mainly Naphtha but that honestly say almost nothing about it, but it might work by smoothing out the wax surface even more, I guess that you would apply it on top of a classic ski wax?
If Astra(inventor of Swix ski wax) was active within none medical products I would have contacted them and see if it was posible to get some input from them.
I might contact Swix as they are not too far from here and see if they have anything they can share but they seem to be exclusively focused at the ski market so I am not sure if they would have anything to add about stuff outside that field, but who knows maybe they could make a try maybe they want to expand into other markets.

I think I will also contact MSW as they are located in Minneapolis/St Paul so it seems odd if they haven't noticed that the wax they make really don't work in the cold but maybe they are just summer bikers.

Axel.se

"Now, I believe you don't have salt."
I can really parse that sentence but let me say that we have stupid amounts of salt in the air here even during summer, let alone during winter when they salt the roads
Anyway the problem I have been having have just been that it stop lubricating the chain too soon the links stopp being stiff after the first 15-30 min of riding.

ClydeClydeson

I have never used the full paraffin soup method, but my experience with wax based lubricants like White Lightning is that they are inferior protective layer compared to plain ol' oil.

Although when I regularly biked in the Winter (it's been about 6 years) I would use a beater bike or build a single speed with the expectation that every moving part would be ruined by road salt by spring.

drlogik 

Axel.se

It was back in the 1979-1981 time frame that I was X/C racing. That was back in the diagonal striding days prior to the "skate skiing". When the temps got to 0 degrees f or below we would use Pledge on the tips and tails for glide wax, not in the kick area. We would strip off all other glide wax before we sprayed on Pledge.

I tell you what though, nothing, and I do mean no other glide wax was faster than Pledge at below zero on the classic X/C skis back then. The only down-side was that it didn't last that long. If I was competing in a 55k race I used regular glide wax.

My skis were Elans and I still have two of the five sets. One pair hasn't even had bindings mounted on them. These were hand-made wood and fiberglass Pro-Form skis...top top quality back then.

The one thing that makes me think that glide wax wouldn't work is if they changed the formulation drastically since then. If they add weird additives to the waxes, they may actually gum-up the chain. If you give this a try post back here or PM me and let me know how it works out.

--

cbrstar

What about a product like Squirt Low Temp chain lube? I live in Alberta also and I can't help but think a synthetic lube will work way better in the cold. If you ever poured motor oil in a car at -30c you will see the synthetic stuff flows better. When you are winter cycling the maintenance you need to do is almost weekly and I can't help but feel that boiling your chain constantly is going to get really old really quick.

drlogik 

cbrstar,

I use Squirt on my fixed gear bikes. Not the low temp stuff but the regular. It works really well in the heat. I haven't tried the low temp. It is one of the highest rated lubes by one of those independent testers.

t1k

I'm sincerely impressed by how knowledgeable you are about the paraffin and beeswax properties.
Is everyone in Sweden that smart? I consider myself somewhat intelligent, have master degree in math but don't even know the paraffin formula (although I hated chemistry from the first class).

My wax mix might not last 4 weeks (for one application). It lasted about 2-3 weeks for me last year when I was commuting to work regularly (our company switched to work from home due to pandemic). My commute is 22km (round trip).
But your road conditions might be better than ours, with better snow removal and less slash/wet snow on the path. My chain was wet after each ride.


I'm curious to know about your experience with the new mix.

I just bought a new batch of beeswax and thinking about buying/trading some motor oil from neighbors.
I agree with you that even if the new mix works well, it's not going to be perfectly reproduceable unless exactly the same kind of oil is used. I'll make a small batch, just enough to dip a chain in, to satisfy my curiosity.

t1k

Exactly. An oil based lubricant will turn into a grinding paste and will accelerate the chain wear. The only good thing oil lubricants do - is silencing the chain.
But if you can stand the sound of a dry chain then you better of riding without lubricant at all, rather than a thick oil lubricant. Would be interesting to test how long a dry chain would last ...

I find that an oil lubricant can work if you use a very thin oil and oil your chain frequently (thoroughly wiping the chain before lubrication). But that would generate a ton of garbage in form of oily rags or paper towels.

I think that I'll soon regret saying the things above because the reaction is going to be merciless Oh well ... people should say what they think.

And here's a little bonus - a page from the 1992 Bridgestone (they used to be a major bike manufacturer/distributor in US in 80's) catalog:

Axel.se

That was what I would suspect, you can often get similar effects by using shorter hydrocarbon chans it might glide like crazy but it will wear off or evaporate really fast, It might actually been posible to get a really quick start but the long lasting effect of regular glide wax by spraying the pledge on top of the glide wax right before the start.

I mainly think that the formulation is made to do radically different things so it would be suricing if it being good at one translate to being good at an other



I tried the regular Squirt but it is just a water wax emulsion, so it take forever and a day to "dry" not the 5 min they say it should take, so that one just turned into a sticky black mess in no time at all,
but it might actually work a little bit better in the really cold as the water would freeze, but I think that in general it would be better to dissolve the vax in a fast evaporating solvant then emulsifying it with water.


I wouldn't call myself that smart I don't have any master degree in anything .
In the end it is mostly a combination of a good memory for details, being rather good at researching stuff, having done a bit of everything, and a rather good ability to combine all that and doing somewhat qualified guesses of how stuff should work.
It took me a good while to find what the formula and what hydrocarbon chain length would be at what level of liquid or solid (check "Alkane" on wikipedia), in the end I never found anything definitive and any oil/wax will be a mixture of different length of hydrocarbons but the ranges I gave is my
estimation of about whare the lengths should be found but it is not unlikely that it is a bit off or can be narrowed down significantly.

That sounds like it last a good amount of time.

[/QUOTE]
I will make sure to report back any discoveries and I am also curios how the motor oil mix will work out.


That would be really interesting, I wonder if the Friction Facts guy have ever thought about doing a run with a dry chain to have a baseline to compare too, the way he test them is still a bit too clean so oils will most likely work at least a bit better then a dry chain during that kind of testing but I am sure that a few of the lubes he have tested actually perform significantly worse then a dry chain.

Yeah, that was my experience too but even doing that, I had to degrease the chain all the time or it would just get a layer of road dust after a short while, So I decided to see if I could find a solution that would be less work, I tried the CRC moly dry lube spray but it don't penetrate into the chain at all.
I would like to test this one as it create a foam that should be able to penetrate the chain allot better then a "dry" spray but I think it will be a bitt troublesome getting it sent to an different continent.
tsmoly.com/aerosol-lubricants-chain-cable-lube-with-moly-p-179.html
found a guy that was "testing" some different stuff for motorcycle chains youtu.be/taSc61XzufQ?t=190 and he test sprayed that one and it seems like it should be able to penetrate into chains

It feels like all community have a huge majority of people that have decided that the only way to do something is the way that it have always been done and have newer ever reflected about if there might be a better way to do stuff.


Nice find,
Wonder how the butter beeswax mixture turned out
I would have used Clarified butter instead of regular butter to get rid of the milk solids and the water that could only mess up stuff in one way or an other.
It is also interesting that they already at that time was pushing for for the use of petroleum free products,

I am sure that it would be posible to replace both the paraffin oil and paraffin wax with natural sourced alternatives, the only problem would most likely be to ensure consistency between batches.
Olive wax might be a good substitute for the paraffin wax as it have similar length hydrocarbon chans but it is mainly composed of two molecules that are a bit more complex so will most likely not behave in the exact same way and that might be both good and bad depending on how it actually act.
I think it is a good idea to use a wax with a lower melting point mixed with the beeswax to get a good suspension with a lower melting point wax with the oil and beeswax instead of just mixing a oil and beeswax

alias5000

I started with regular Squirt. Nice, but not super nice in rain, cold and turns dirty quick. Switched to the low-temp version and have been using it for some seasons now. I'm happy with that summer and winter (Ontario, Canada), Lasts much longer in rain, snow and cold and doesn't seem to turn as dirty.

(This winter is the first on paraffin waxing the chain - out of curiousity and because I needed a new chain. After waxing and cooling, I drag it around a round pole to flex the links. Sheds lots of wax but leaves the chain fairly flexible right away and seems to hold up well in the mild winter we've had so far)

cbrstar

I think I read on Sheldon Browns site a mixture of 3/4 tallow and 1/4 paraffin wax. I wonder if doing such a mixture would leave less excess wax?

John_E

Have you checked if there is any wax build up in between cogs of the cassette? Especially the smaller ones, sometimes there will be build up on the side of the cogs closer to the teeth which causes regular skipping.

I also never wait for the wax to cool down to pull the chain out. On the contrary I pull it while the pot is working and everything is hot. Much less build up on the outside. I don't think the additional wax building up on the outer links is doing anything good.

dwmckee

I have not done this, but logic would tell me to pull it out while still very hot and let the excess drip off to leave just a thin film on the chain with minimal excess. The loose stuff on the outside does nothing more than flake off and gum up the rest of your drivetrain.

Axel.se

As I think that that it would be beneficial to leave as much wax as posible inside the rollers I usually let the chain sit in the wax around 100°c for a hour or so and then wait until it have cooled to about 55°c before pulling it out, haven't had any problem with excess wax on the outside since I forgot to pull it out at 55°c and it had reached 45°c when I remembered that I needed to pull it out.



The MSW, IKEA mineral oil, Beeswax I did a while ago worked really well for about 250-300 km in +10°c to -10°c in both heavy rain and heavy snow before it even started to creak even a little bit so that is rather good result, I still need to try a bit more beeswax and less oil and see how that work, might work a bit worse in colder temperatures but hopefully better in during warmer ones

t1k

Hi Axel.se. I'm happy to hear from you, and glad that the experiment with wax mix worked well.
I've been paying attention to how long does one waxing lasts for me. And my results are not as good as yours (although I'm still quite happy with them). I get less than 200kms on one waxing, but I ride an e-bike (Mid-drive pedal assist motor) so there's much more stress on the chain.
However, this wax mix is great for extremely cold weather. We are going through some harsh cold conditions, it's been -30C (-40C with wind-chill) for a week now. The mix performed flawlessly, no chain skipping, shifting is crisp and fast.

My chain just passed 0.5% wear mark and I'm going to try the paraffin-beeswax-motor oil mix on the new chain (borrowed 20g of motor oil from a neighbor ... wify is a pastry chef and often shares home baked bread and deserts with the neighbors so the oil was free).

I'm curios how do you clean new chains before waxing? The procedure that I was using is to soak the chain in several mineral spirit baths, then rinse it in rubbing alcohol.
I want to reduce the need for harsh chemicals in my bikes maintenance practice and was thinking about skipping the new chain degreasing. Wouldn't factory the chain lubricant soften and wash off in a hot wax? The wax adhesion is likely not going to be great on the first waxing. But it should improve on the next applications. Do you think this sounds crazy?

I would also like to ask your opinion on using beeswax on a freewheel as a rust inhibitor. I have a (vintage?) 1989 Miyata 618GT touring bike that I use as my winter commuter (when the weather is not too harsh). The bike has a 6 speed Suntour Accushift system. Maeda Suntour are out of business since early 90s but they used to make a high quality and reliable components (some say better than Shimano). The freewheel on this system does not have any protective coating and rusts easily when exposed to road salt. I was thinking about taking the freewheel apart, cleaning the cogs from rust and dip them into beeswax to protect from rusting. Do you think that would be efficient rust protection?