Originally Posted by
elcruxio
Water also doesn't do anything to titanium. Unless you stick a piece of it under a water cutter.
Well that’s a classic non sequitur. The water isn’t reacting with the titanium under a water cutter. It is reacting to the pressure of the water from the water cutter.
Now I don't know what's going on there, but I've observed several times now that I've put in a rusty chain and a much less rusty chain comes out. At times a rusted chain has come out pristine. I'm not that interested on why it happens but it's neat that it does. Maybe it's some combination of heat fracturing, agitation and the effects of an induction coil underneath. But maybe you can figure that one out?
Water doesn’t remove rust, plain and simple. What you might be observing is not “rust” or the oxides of iron but, rather, iron that has been oxidized with chloride. Iron chlorides
are water soluble and look a bit like iron oxides. But iron oxide is water insoluble.
]in this quote there are some fairly wild assumptions. But I believe particle size in non sticky materials isn't dictated by hardness. The wax does eventually come out. Otherwise what would be the point of even rewaxing? You could just infinitely refresh a chain with a heat gun.
It’s only
seems like a wild assumption because you don’t understand the material. Wax basically has no particle size from a melt. It does not crystallize but is more like a plastic or a gum. It is rather ductile and can be reshaped and reformed endlessly and will still never break apart into any kind of discrete particle. Chains have to be rewaxed because of the plastic nature of the wax. Pressure on the wax causes it to squeeze out of the high pressure areas at the pins and plates connection. Some of it may end up being forced out of the chain which will required added material but, for the most part, the wax remains in the chain but just not in the place where it is needed.
Yes, you could just refresh the chain with a heat gun but a heat gun has little control and you might end up heating it high enough for it to flow out of the chain or even catch fire. Putting the chain back in the hot melt is more efficient. Using a solvent wax does the same.
How could the water add something exactly?
Water adds oxygen. Oxygen promotes rust.
Also, not much sticks to the outside of the chain especially if the chain has had time to dry.
Nothing on the outside of the chain has much to do with damaging the chain. It’s what is inside the chain that is the issue and that doesn’t dry all that quickly. The squeaks you hear from an unlubricated chain isn’t due to anything on the outside. The squeaks a coming from inside the house (to quote horror movies of old).
So if we still entertain the idea that the chain isn't actually hermetically sealed, can water or salt water get in? You do know how road salt works don't you?
As my wife so cleverly observed this morning while we were talking about this, the idea of using wax
is to seal the chain. And, yes, I know how road salts work. Do you understand the concept of polar vs nonpolar compounds? Short version: Salt is ionic. It has no affinity for nonpolar compounds like wax and oil. It will not dissolve into either in any amount. Water is polar and it
will dissolve sodium chloride (and all of the other chlorides used on roads) in very large amounts. That brings up another point on why to avoid the boiling water step. Boiling water will melt and remove the wax but will introduce any dissolved salt into the chain where it can do all kinds of damage. Salt catalyzes rust.
There's just so many completely unsubstantiated claims now. It's like a reverse gish gallop.
What part is unsubstantiated? Do you disagree that chains get dirty through use?
So what ends up at the bottom of the wax puck?
A much smaller amount of surface dirt than you think.
It's not that small of a gap though...
I dare you to measure it. It is on the order of thousandths of a millimeter. Grit that is small enough to make it through the gap has to be that small.
but the grit had no mechanism of holding on to the waxed chain...?
No, not really. Wax on the outside of the chain falls off relatively quickly upon use. The surface of the chain may hold onto a small amount of dust through static but it’s not much nor does that happen very often. But, again, the wax is keeping the grit
out of the chain because it fills the gaps in the chain and doesn’t flow.
Then again you go against said amateurish test results with anecdotes so...
You
do seem to get my point!
I might. You don't know what I might or might not do.
Don’t go playing dumb. You know exactly what I mean. “You” could mean you personally or “you” as in people. Generally, people don’t blow on cold things to “cool” them. To do so would be silly.
every three days
And?
So the point was that the chain is almost 100c when it comes out. It'll cool quickly due to evaporation. It won't take long for it to dry completely.
No. The point is that the chain cools quickly and water inside the chain is trapped in the chain for an unknown amount of time where it can introduce oxygen which promotes oxidation of the iron in the chain
To my knowlege water doesn't actually wash away wax or oils without detergent. But I'm not a chemist so what do I know...
Water
below the melting point of the wax won’t wash off the wax. Water above the melting point of the wax…50° to 70°C…will cause the wax to melt and, because the wax is lighter than the water, will cause the wax to be removed from the chain.
this sort of information makes me worry about the nature of the bubbles that rise out of a boiled chain put in hot wax...
That’s just air trapped in the chain. You have mentioned before that you don’t heat the wax over the boiling point of water. Any water inside the chain has a greater affinity for the steel than the wax does and will stay in place. If there were enough water in the chain to actually flow out, the bubbles would
fall, not rise. Water is denser than wax and other hydrocarbons.
This one's only off by around 0,2C so that's alright.
You’d better go recalculate that. 0.2
isn’t 20% of 100.
I suppose I could also use a meat thermometer...
some models have bluetooth now!
I just wonder how I've managed for so long with no lab grade equipment...
I've actually found this knob on the side of the crock pot. If the wax is still solid, i turn it, a light goes on and the wax begins melting. If the wax gets too hot, turning the knob the other way shuts off the light and the wax magically stops getting hotter.
You really are being intentionally dense. My comments were directed to your comments about needing very fine control of the wax melt. You have no ability for fine temperature control with a crockpot. Telling someone not to heat the wax above a certain temperature with a crockpot is not something they can control…not that it matters. Wax isn’t damaged by heat.
luckily the waxes today are better than the waxes of yore.
Waxes haven’t changed significantly in the last 100+ years and certainly not in the last 40 years. Gulf Wax is the same wax as my mother, grandmother and even great grandmother bought to seal jam jars. There really is nothing to do to “improve” them.
Isn't mineral spirits essentially turpentine? Naphta is a lot more dramatic in the vicinity of open flames.
Turpentine is a distillate of trees, usually pine trees. It is very different in chemical structure to mineral spirits. Mineral spirits are also known as “mineral turpentines” but that is because mineral spirits can be used to to do a similar job like diluting paint or cleaning paint.