Wax Works

Waxing a chain. © Eugene Brennan

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 waste-ends of candles years years in the church and they were given to my mother, possibly because she knew I was making candles at the time. I was experimenting with using PVC waste pipe as moulds for the candles. Anyway the process of chain waxing is somewhat tedious, but worth it. 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. The next stage is to dip the chain in hot wax, melted for safety reasons in a double boiler. This ensures that the wax can never reach more than 100 degrees Celsius, well below its autoignition temperature. Chain waxing has to be done every 200 to 300 miles. However, this makes the chain nice and clean to the touch, 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 with 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.

Double boiler for melting wax safely. © Eugene Brennan

Candles. © Eugene Brennan