Originally Posted by
Kontact
There is no way wax allows hundreds of miles of lubrication by remaining a solid that doesn't flow at all inside the pressure points of the chain. If that worked, chains would be made with PVD coatings much harder and longer lasting than any layer of hard wax could possibly be, since wax is softer than a fingernail. Or nylon bushings, which are also far harder than wax.
You do realize that chemistry is the study of matter and its states don’t you? Have you ever actually looked at a block of wax? It is a solid. Yes, you can make it into a liquid by melting it but it is a solid at temperatures that we humans normally operate at. Even the hottest temperatures we humans regularly encounter, wax is still a solid with a melt point around 130°F to 150°F. It is plastic and can move around under pressure but that isn’t flow nor the material being liquid. But that plasticity works both ways. Physics says the wax is going to be forced out of the pressure points but there really isn’t anything driving the wax back in. In other words, the wind only blows one way.
As to how long the wax lasts, not all of the wax is going to be pushed out of the pressure points. A small amount…a few molecules thick…would linger for a long time. But that really is all the lubrication that is needed.
Yes, you could put a vapor deposition layer on the chain but that would probably be cost prohibitive.
The problem here is that wax is not a lubricant for any other industrial uses, and the fact that it works as well as it does on bicycle chains is essentially counterintuitive and outside engineering practices. So if you have a flawed belief about what is going on inside the chain, you really can't advise anyone how to improve that performance.
I think these guys might disagree.
So might these guys. And these guys. I could go on. That is works on chains isn’t counterintuitive at all. It’s been known to work on chains for decades. I experimented with hot wax before I had kids which is nearly 40 years ago now. About 10 years later after I gave up the hassle of waxing with hot wax, White Lightning hit the market and I’ve never looked back.
So "chemistry" aside, the OP is maybe having a problem with his complex wax procedure. Wax is cheap, so if simply throwing the chain in wax is not acceptable, use two pots of hot wax - one to clean and one to lube. That avoids questions of chemistry and allows the chain to be lubricated the way people have been doing for 50 years at least.
rosefarts is having problems with the longevity of his waxing. I don’t particularly see his procedure as complex. It’s mostly useless as water has no place in cleaning a chain for any reason…it’s that chemistry thing again. That’s when stripping off the factory lube or cleaning dust off the chain before waxing. It’s a useless step but then most cleaning procedures that have more than one step…washing with mineral spirits…are.
Two pots of wax is just as silly. There’s no need to clean the chain with wax even in dusty conditions. Dirt doesn’t stick to the wax that much. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.