Originally Posted by
cyccommute
You can’t take something that is water insoluble and mix it with water and expect it to hold in any kind of homogenous mixture. With wax, you can’t really even expect a heterogenous mixture. Pound the wax into particles at the atomic level and it still won’t mix with water. The wax will just float on the water.
The water based waxes use emulsifiers (
Squirt says <5%) to hold the totally incompatible materials together. An emulsifier is just a specialized surfactant. And, while the water will evaporate, the emulsifier will not. Waxes are not reactive so the emulsifier is still there ready to become active if exposed to water.
Silca doesn't use a surfactant but they do have a small amount of alcohol as carrier (that's one way to make the wax "small"). Rex doesn't disclose how they achieve the emulsion but I doubt they're using a surfactant. Otherwise they'd have a hard time making the claims they're making.
Organic solvent based waxes don’t use emulsifiers and, when the solvent evaporates, only wax remains.
Unfortunately you can't get those in the EU, so one either needs to make their own or go with water based. I've had a hard time finding solvents that can dissolve Rex chain wax.
A hair drier or a heat gun is not something I carry while on tour.
Yup. Which is why the flame of a stove would work just as well.