Originally Posted by
cyccommute
I don’t think it is a 2 fold problem but only the result of the inability of the wax to flow. Wax gets pushed out of the places where it needs to lubricate and has no mechanism for flowing back…as you said id doesn’t “heal”. The pressure points where the wax is needed gets starved for lubrication and wear metal-on-metal. Any water that penetrates into the chain sets up residence in those pressure points and causes the metal to oxidize. I don’t agree with the current magical thinking that wax can make a chain last 3 to 5 times what oil does because of this starving of the lubrication points. In my experience, chains last about 3500 miles with wax or about the same as an oiled chain does.
My hypothesis for why neither lubricant results in vastly superior chain wear is that wax starves the lubrication points resulting in the metal-on-metal wear but oil, being a fluid, flows grit that it picks up and pumps that grit into the wear points where it does a different kind of damage. The only difference between the lubricants really is the cleanliness of wax over oil.
That’s really the only place that the wax needs to be. It’s also the only place that oil needs to be. Any wax short of the soft wax that comes from the factory is going to flake off the outside of the chain. The wax on the outside doesn’t do anything for the chain and really isn’t needed. It could be removed after hot waxing the chain but that is often too time consuming to do, although Silca $40/lb wax might be worth taking the time to flake the excess off and put it back in the pot.
On the other hand, oil on the outside of the chain may protect against (mostly cosmetic) surface rust but it also serves as a mechanism for collecting chain damaging grit and pumping into the chain. Wax won’t do that because, as FBinNY points out, wax doesn’t flow.
I agree on both. The reason I quit wax was, a) living in a communal environment, common kitchen, inappropriate to do tech stuff on the stove, plus it's lot of effort and time, though when taking chain off to soak in solvent, that also took a ton of time, and I've of late discovered on-bike chain cleaners, wow is that a dream for time savings. And b) no protection against rust, and my region in recent years is more prone to rain.
Somewhere, might have been on here or saw elsewhere, I saw a vintage picture of a tin of chain wax (from like 1920s or 1930s I think), and it contained wax (might have been beeswax, or parafin), lanolin, and other stuff, I think it may not have been hard and brittle like the candle wax I used. I might have seen that on an old thread, which also mentioned, to get the impurities like metal out of the wax melt, melt it over a layer of water, the wax will float on top (and solidify that way), and the impurities will be down in the water and stay separate. Brilliant! I haven't used wax since, but was wondering how to scrape the bottom of the large puck to get rid of that.