donhaller 

I just converted both my bikes to waxed chains a few months ago. One of them is ready to be waxed again. It has about 400 miles on it and I'm going through the re-wax process in my head.

1) remove chain
2) put chain into pot of boiling water
3) swish it around for a few minutes to remove any sand, debris and gunk
4) remove chain from hot water and wipe clean with a microfiber towel or rag
5) thread chain onto chain hanger
6) lower chain into molten wax mixture as the initial waxing
Does this follow your typical re-wax routine?

Also, what do you do with the cassette and chainrings? Just wipe them down? I have an ultrasonic but don't think the cassette would need that for some time as it looks pretty darn clean as it is now.
Thanks for your thoughts

cyccommute 

Why over complicate it? Drop it into hot wax and be done with it. The whole point of wax is that wax keeps the sand, debris, and gunk out of the chain unlike oil which actually pumps that stuff into the inside of the chain. Anything on the outside of the chain will settle to the bottom of the wax melt and stay there. If you are worried about it, take the block of wax out after it cools and shave off the lower 1/4” of wax and dispose of it. I wouldn’t bother.

As for the rest of the drivetrain, it should be clean enough that you shouldn’t have to do any thing to it as well. If you are really concerned about it, you could simply spray it off with a hose but, honestly, again, I wouldn’t bother.

donhaller 

Thanks for the reply. I totally get what you are saying and was my thoughts too. Dipping the chain in boiling water first and wiping it down isn't much more of a step though. Just looks that way when broken down.
But I do like the fact that it's easy to shave the crap off the bottom of the wax block after it has cooled.

cyccommute 

A water wash is an unnecessary complication. If you have water in the chain, you need to do something to get it out which means another step to “chase” the water off. That can be done by drying…which includes the risk of rusting…or by using a solvent like acetone or denatured alcohol to remove the water. You should remove the water because you are dropping the chain into a hot wax melt that probably isn’t temperature controlled and could be above the boiling point of water.

Since the water step is really unnecessary, chasing the water is unnecessary. Don’t do steps that aren’t needed. They just add complexity without value. My career was developing methods and procedures. The main tenet of that job was to do as few steps as possible and only those that are necessary. If you really feel the need to remove surface contamination, a wet rag would do as much as putting the chain in boiling water does.

veganbikes

I would have to agree with cyccommute on this one don't bother with the water. If you were doing this to a non-waxed chain I would probably swish around in mineral spirits to get it nice and clean but only on the first time, after it is waxed I would probably just give it a quick wipe down and then into the wax. Water could easily cause rust and I don't like a rusty chain, now a Rusty Cage, yes, either Cash or Soundgarden.

You could also pass the wax through a heated fine mesh strainer if you didn't want to waste wax but honestly I don't think wax is super expensive unless you get some of the more bike specific speed stuff which can maybe be a touch more but probably not enough to really save every little bit of wax.

Aardwolf

Exactly my approach.

Freewheels etc get a stab with an old dry 1" paint brush - knocks any loose wax flakes off and can reach down between the cogs.

elcruxio

You don't do hot waxing. How would you know how much boiling water helps or doesn't help?

Boiling water removes surface rust, salt, mud, fine dust, contaminated wax, metal particles etc.

It also keeps the pot wax much cleaner, which is a priority if the wax contains additives.

After the chain comes out, it's near 100C, which means most water on it will evaporate in short order. After putting the chain in the hot wax the rest of the water will be replaced by wax. As we all know, hot wax should never get to 100c, but if it does, there's usually enough vapor coming off it to warn you to at least measure the temperature.

cyccommute 

No, I don’t do hot waxing. But I do know chemistry and chemical compatibility as well as chemical incompatibility. Water and wax don’t mix. Water and steel is not a good combination. Wax and oil are used to exclude water.

The boiling water won’t remove surface rust. Not much short of hydrochloric acid will do that. As for salt, mud, fine dust, metal particles, etc., those are not inside a waxed chain and are, generally, of little concern. They don’t dissolve in the wax. If they are of a concern, a simple wipe with a damp cloth is just as effective without displacing the wax inside the chain with water, necessitating another cleaning step. Don’t do something if it’s not needed.

Frankly, additives are mostly useless as well, especially additives that don’t dissolve in the wax. Suspended additives don’t really do all that much and are unnecessary.

Nope. None of it. Not a single word of what you say is true. Trust the chemist. First water: Yes, the chain is near 100°C but it quickly cools when removed from the boiling water. Since the water temp is above the melting point of the wax, the wax will be displaced inside the chain with water which won’t evaporate after the chain starts cooling.

Second, the wax: Wax is lighter than water but water has a greater affinity for metal than wax does. Polar substances stick to metals stronger than nonpolar substances. If you just drop a chain into the wax melt, the wax will form around the outside of the chain but the water will remain in pockets inside the chain against the metal. Now you’ve trapped a rust promoter against steel. That’s why the water should be chased off the chain before any kind of lubricant is applied…whether it is oil or wax.

Third, temperature: Crock pots are not thermally regulated. You have no idea what the temperature is inside the crock pot at any setting unless you measure it. Even at the lowest setting, a crock pot is capable of cooking something and boiling water. That implies that the lowest setting is at least the boiling point of water and probably higher.

To paraphrase the great Vizzini: “You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous of which is, 'never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less well-known is this: 'Never go in against a chemist when chemistry is on the line! '”

asgelle

Perhaps, but how are you on tribology? Which is a horse of a different color.

cyccommute 

Not a horse of a different color at all but more like multiple horses.

Not exactly sure how biology works in there but I’m relatively conversant with all of those topics as well as having lots and lots of experience with bicycles, bicycle mechanics, and the wearing of bicycle parts.

icemilkcoffee 

Just forget all that and use drip wax after that initial hot dip.

mackgoo

I do the boiling water step. I boil a kettle put the chain in a colander and pour the hot water over the chain.

donhaller 

Thanks!!

elcruxio

I think you'll find that this all isn't that much about chemistry...

It's not chemical removal. Silicon carbide doesn't chemically do anything to rust. However when you bond it to some paper and rub it against a rusty steel piece the rust goes away.

I don't know why a surface rusted waxed chain that goes in a pot of boiling water comes out much less rusty and in some cases pristine, but it still happens. Has happened multiple times now. I doubt the tapwater here contains hydrochloric acid.

If we were dealing with freshly waxed unused chains then all of the above would be true. But we're dealing with chains that get used. And while said chains are being used the outside and inside wax flakes off and gets ejected out. Stuff does get in as a chain is not a hermetically sealed environment even when waxed. Water especially is a great for transporting gunk inside the chain, even a waxed one.
Gunk getting inside the chain is also something many hot waxers witness as they're scraping the bottom of a wax puck clean. Haven't needed to do that after i started dipping the chains in water prior to waxing.

I'd argue that salt isn't great for a steel chain. My chemistry knowledge is admittedly a bit hazy, but I've come to understand that salt corrodes steel especially when the salt is dissolved in water. Since we get salted roads during the winter time the amount of salt getting in the drivetrain is not insignificant and does even eat through steel frames at times.
The other stuff like metal particles, dust, mud etc. that do get in do in fact act as abrasives that wear the chain down. If that is not a concern, well there's not much I can say to that. But with the price of chains and drivetrains on some of my bikes I like to keep them going as long as possible before replacing.

Also if you apply drip wax on a used chain the gunk inside isn't exactly going to wash out but rather it'll get embedded in the layer of still solvent liquefied wax as it hardens. Not a concern when you do it a few times between hot waxings but the gunk will nevertheless accumulate.

I am unsure how a damp rag is going to clean the inside of the chain. Perhaps the same way it does with oil? You wipe an oiled chain long enough and at the end it's factory clean?

So the testing done on additives would argue otherwise. Especially in dry conditions the so called dry lubricant additives in hot waxes tend to increase the waxing interval by a significant margin. How effective they are in wet conditions is a different matter.
However Rex Black Diamond hot wax with its dry lubricant has something like a 1400km use interval between waxings whereas the Silca hot melt (which also has additives) has a 400km use interval between waxings. A wax that has no additives will have a smaller use interval than the Silca.
Granted, the people at Rex are also far more proficient at formulating the actual wax than any other manufacturer, but the wax on its own doesn't explain that big of a difference. Also the Rex wax has better numbers in the dry when more of the additive blocks are used, which means that the additives are directly resposible for the increase in use intervals.

Again my knowledge in chemistry and physics is far from what it could be but I do have a recollection of evaporation and energy... Was it that evaporation gave off energy? No, I think it may have been the other way round...
Anyways it doesn't take long for a chain to dry completely after it comes out of the water. And the chain does dry out eventually even below freezing so it's not like a chain will be wet forever after it cools down enough. If one is truly concerned one could chase off the water with a compressor or heat gun but you could also just drop the chain in the wax and wait for it to dry there.

So, if we're talking about how wax that's around 70-80 degrees celsius, it doesn't take that long for residual water to evaporate off from inside the chain. You could swish it around if it makes you feel better but after the chain stops bubbling it's dry and completely waxed.
On that point, a waxed chain that's been boiled and left to dry will again become stiff after it's been cooled.

I think it's generally accepted that when using hot wax it's a good idea to empoy a thermometer of some sort. I believe it's mentioned in quite a few places that one should not let the wax overheat. It's also common sense in this case. Hot waxing without a thermometer is like deep frying without a thermometer. Some people do it, but you really shouldn't.
I have a nifty laser pointer thermometer. It's a fun little toy.
However my crock pot on low doesn't go over 100 C. When on Hi it does but that hasn't caused any dramatics with wet chains. Made a cool sizzling sound though.

One thing I've noticed with many professionals is that when you know something really well, all problems somehow become directly related to that thing you know really well. It makes thinking outside the box of your own creation pretty difficult. I've fallen victim of that myself.
You then need to step back and consider whether the issue at hand is at all related to the thing you know so very well.

donhaller 

Thanks for all the replies - I stayed the course and did my process of putting the chain into a pot of boiling water and swishing it around a few minutes and then wiping it off with a microfiber cloth prior to re-waxing. It honestly took just a little longer and I had peace of mind that if anything were lurking in the chain it might be washed away in the boil. Nonetheless, my first re-waxing is completed and now both of my bikes can continue the cycle. I've bought a second chain to use as a swapping chain to alternate between waxes. Thanks for all the comments.

Be Happy

cyccommute 

Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.

It’s all about chemistry! Everything is about chemistry. Physicists have got people thinking that it’s all about physics but without chemistry, physics doesn’t exist. Even the understanding of quantum mechanics comes from chemical studies.

You said “boiling water removes surface rust…” It doesn’t! It simply does not remove surface rust. Silicon carbide is not water. And, again, it’s all about chemistry. Without chemistry, there would be no silicon carbide nor paper nor adhesive to keep the silicon carbide on the paper. But water doesn’t do anything to rust.

You might be misremembering or you might be observing something else other than oxides of iron…i.e. “rust”…but those oxides of iron are water insoluble. You could boil a rusty part for weeks and you wouldn’t end up with clean iron. Life would be ever so much easier if that were true.


You are misunderstanding the point of using wax. Oil, being a liquid, flows in and out of the chain and acts like a pump for grit into the chain. Wax is a solid that fills the inside of the chain and doesn’t act like a pump for grit. That keeps the grit from the outside from getting into the internal workings of the chain. Yes, the wax flakes off the outside of the chain. Inside, the wax has no place to go. It may break apart inside the rollers but it has no place to go. Wax is not brittle enough to break into small enough chunks to pass through the gap between the plates. It stays inside the chain (but not the outside) and keeps protecting the chain from grit infiltration.

Bottom line: Any grit seen in the wax pot is from the surface of the chain and has nothing to do with the internals of the chain. As I’ve said endlessly, a simple surface wipe will remove almost all grit that would end up in the bottom of the pot. Boiling the chain in water does absolutely nothing helpful and could end up adding something that could damage the chain.

You are correct that salt is detrimental to steel. However, any salt on a chain…whether lubricated with oil or wax…is on the outside of the chain and, yet again, a wipe with a damp rag will remove it.

All of that is present all the time on any exposed drivetrain like a bicycles. Boiling the chain in an attempt to remove it is a bit like trying to hold back the ocean with a spoon. It’s there and even after you remove it from all of the drivetrain, it will come back in the same amount after your first few miles. Don’t do a procedure to just do the procedure. If you are going to do a procedure, have a reason to do it. Otherwise you are just wasting your time.

No. I’ll agree that the grit on the outside gets washed through the chain but most all drip wax lubricants say to flush the solvent/wax mixture thoroughly through the chain. This move what little grit resides on the outside of the chain through so that there’s not much grit inside the chain. There’s not much on the outside, however, because wax doesn’t hang onto grit very well and what wax is on the outside of the chain sloughs off easily. There’s just no mechanism to keep the grit on the outside of the chain.

Oil, on the other hand, hangs onto grit during riding. It doesn’t move through the chain because the oil generally isn’t there is sufficient quantities to flow out of the chain. Reapplication of oil flushes the grit out but, because of the nature of the oil, any grit remove is simply replaced with new grit from outside.

Additionally, if you can actually see the grit that’s not something that you need to worry about. Grit that does damage in oil is microscopic. It has to be at least small enough to pass between the plates and rollers which is a very small gap. But, again, with wax that gap is filled. Not so much with oil.

A damp rag removes all the grit that needs to be remove on a waxed chain because the grit is only on the outside. Oiled chains are different. You can wipe it all day long and the outside looks great. The inside doesn’t.

The “testing” I’ve seen leaves a lot to be desired. All of it is rather amateurish. Any claims of interval use is anecdotal at best. I’ve done many tests as a professional scientist. Just doing one test on your product isn’t a “test”. There needs to be multiple measurements of the parameter being tested with controls…some kind of baseline…to compare to. And then the results are submitted for review to other people whose job it is to look at those result and critic it. They look for problems with the procedure, check the data, check the math if necessary, suggest fixes, etc. None of the “tests” I’ve seen documented have risen to that level…mostly because it’s damned costly to do that kind of work.

Why do you blow on hot soup or hot beverages? Why don’t you blow on cold beverages? Every put alcohol on your skin? Every opened a pot and been burned by the steam coming off whatever is boiling? Evaporation removes heat which cools the bulk of whatever is evaporating. A chain will cool significantly when removed from boiling water and it will trap some water inside the chain. How long it takes for that water to completely evaporate depends on a number of factors…the heat of the air around the chain and the amount of water vapor in the air around the chain being the most important. The longer the water stays on the chain, the more rust can form and, from the discussion above, rust isn’t easy to remove. And this will be rust on the inside of the chain where it can do damage.

Yes, you can chase the water off with a compressor or heat gun or with a high vapor pressure (easily evaporated) solvent like acetone or alcohol. But the boiling water step doesn’t do anything helpful and, since it is above the melting point of the wax, the water will displace the wax in a place where you don’t want water. It’s an unnecessary step.

If you don’t dry the chain completely water won’t evaporate away for a chain in the wax melt at that temperature. The water sits under the wax and has no way to escape. Wax seals the water against the metal where the oxygen in the water can do what it does. It doesn’t matter that the chain becomes stiff again, that is a function of the wax.

First, don’t trust that “fun little toy” too much. They are rather inaccurate. Being off by 20% is not uncommon. Second, I can think of several ways that I could control a wax melt temperature but none of them are something I could do at home. A crock pot is a highly inaccurate tool and has absolutely no control over what the actual temperature is. Low, medium, and high are not “temperatures”. They are preset and there is not way to actually change those presets. A double boiler has little to no control over the temperature either. The temperature is the temperature of boiling water. That changes with altitude but that’s a rather inconvenient way to control temperature.

Direct heating of the wax could be used to control the temperature but that is tricky and fiddly. I’ve done it in the lab and it is not an easy way to heat something accurately.

But you have missed my point. Crock pots are not good at providing any kind of temperature control. They are what they are and trying to keep the temperature of the wax to some value is not something that is in your control when using one.

My job as a chemist was as a researcher. My entire job was to “think outside the box”. But in order to do that “thinking” you have to have a very good idea of what is inside the box. I try to teach people who have no idea that the “box” even exists where the box is and why they should consider what is inside that box. You started this with “you don’t hot wax” as if that were some important statement. I have hot waxed in the very distant past when it was certainly not fashionable. I didn’t find the result to be worth the effort and stopped. Shortly afterwards White Lightning introduced their product which I did try and found to be much easier to use with the same result as hot wax.

I have also spent years thinking about, researching, and testing (but not in a professional way) chain lubricants. Granted my opinions are somewhat anecdotal as are most people’s opinions. However, I do have a bit more insight into how all this works because of my chemistry background than most people. People develop elaborate cleaning procedures for chains base on nothing more than what they think needs to be done. But they never think about what the steps of the procedure actually accomplish. The general idea is that if you do an elaborate procedure, you are accomplishing more. But all the elaborate procedures accomplish is making a lot of waste.

Swishing a chain in mineral spirits (white spirits or naphtha in your part of the world) for a few seconds will do the same thing as some 14 step procedure that includes rinsing in yak fat does. If you can do all the work in one step, why add another 13 steps and use yak fat?

For a prewaxed chain, it’s even simpler. Just drop the chain in hot wax again. No extra cleaning needed. No extra steps needed.

”One and done” is a good saying to live by.

Garthr

I thought the whole point of hot waxing is that you just dunk it in the hot wax, give it a swirl, and whatever is on the surface goes to the bottom. What's on the bottom stays there. I can see giving the chain a wipe down with a rag, or even blowing some mild pressure compressed air on it to blow off surface debris but boiling water makes for one hot mess, but that's just me. I get it, it's your stuff and you're gonna do what you're gonna do regardless. So what's the point of asking for the forums thoughts ?

I'd use a propane torch(lightly) before I'd use boiling water. At least once to try it. When I used Squirt water based drip wax it tended to build up on the rings and cogs. The only way I found to remove it effectively was to soften the wax with careful use of a propane torch. I had one on hand, long unused, so I tried it. Then I could wipe it right off. White Lightning Clean ride petro based drip wax didn't build up and worked a little longer between applications.

There's no perfect lube for everyone all the time absolutely however as asking what's best is like asking what's the best method to fill a hole in the Titanic ?

Wattsup

I do the same from time to time. Cleans the chain nicely, and the hot chains dries quickly. Never had a problem doing it this way. Practice always trumps theory.

Alan K

Everything is not about Chemistry alone; if you were to say that everything is about science, I’d agree.

But another thread about waxing chains; I don’t know even Brazilians that fixated about waxing.

If a chain is getting rusty, toss it and buy a new one! [Clean every component it touched.]

cyccommute 

Definition of chemistry
Chemistry is the study of matter and, last time I checked everything is composed of matter. Even the thoughts that we clever monkeys generate are the result of chemical reactions inside our brain. Typing our ideas is the result of a chemical reaction moving the muscles to type on a keyboard made of chemicals. The reaction of the buttons on the keyboard are due to movement of electrons due to the excitation of the contacts in the board. If I speak my words, the words are generated by chemical reactions in my vocal cords and the words you hear are due to chemical reactions in your ear.

Yes, everything is about chemistry. Even the endless discussion about chain maintenance are about chemistry. Especially discussions about chain maintenance. Wax is a chemical. The way wax interacts with the chain is about chemistry. The way the wax lubricates the chain is about chemistry. The way the chain reacts to lubrication (or lack thereof) is about chemistry. Same holds for oil, olive oil, or bacon fat.


Chain waxing…and basic chain maintenance in general…should be simple. For some reason everybody and their brother wants to make it into something needlessly mysterious and complicated with more levels of ritual than a full on Latin Mass.

Alan K

If one considers the context, lubricating bicycle chains, I concur with your point. However, if “everything” is taken literally, I think that my daughter-in-law (an astrophysicist) might disagree.

In these fora, most of us can’t completely stay on the topic, hence the confusion.

A long list of steps to use wax for chain lubrication is amusing!

cyccommute 

That’s because all the other sciences think that they are important. Think of it this way: What are all those things involved in astrophysics made of? Stuff. If it’s made of stuff, it’s chemistry. All the other sciences are just the study of what chemistry makes stuff do.

That’s something I’ve been arguing for nearly 20 years. I’m often amazed at the number of steps and the elaborate procedures that people use for chain cleaning and lubrication. None of it is actually necessary.

Alan K

She might say that chemistry doesn’t explain gravity too well.

Who knows, someday we might have the great unified theory and it might all start making perfect sense. But at this point, there are holes in our knowledge.

asgelle

Enough is enough. I don't know if you're deliberately misinterpreting your own definition of chemistry or can't comprehend the limits it imposes; but that definition, as quoted by you, does not say that chemistry is any study pertaining to matter. In fact, your definition restricts chemistry to very limited set of topics. To argue trying to fold gravity into a grand unified theory falls under chemistry is laughable.

base2