Instead
of oil, I've been using church candle wax for lubricating my bike chain over
the last year. I think they were throwing out the ends of candles years years ago and my mother gave them to me because I was making candles at the time, experimenting with using PVS waste pipe as moulds. The process is a bit tedious: Before dipping in wax, I
rinse the chain five times in kerosene to remove all grime and then the
final rinse is in methylated spirits to remove kerosene. This has to be
done every 200 to 300 miles. However the chain is always nice and clean
and grit from the road doesn't stick to it and wear it away. So far,
I've got 1200 miles out of a chain wit waxing and there's minimal wear (I'm nerdily logging the data on a
spreadsheet), This isn't much by road bike standards (it's on my MTB),
but I was getting less than 1000 miles I think before because of all the grit that stuck to the oil and rapidly wore the chain.
