I'd like to know this, too. The cassette on my KHS is just caked full of residue on every cog tooth.

Ultrasonic cleaner with 50:50 mix of Simple Green & water.

So is there any appreciable advantage to using paraffin wax over white lightning, with or without solvents?

If only I owned or had access to such a device...

+1 to this question. I use White Lightning, and it seems to work quite well - the change from smooth to rough is not as sudden as someone described above, but close enough. But it is real easy to apply, as compared to the molten wax method. Similar to Cyccommute, I have childhood memories of setting wax to fire when melting it. Mine are slightly worse, in that I tried to douse the flame by holding the bowl with the burning wax under the kitchen tap. That caused a hell of a splash - I spent an hour scraping up wax from everywhere before my parents came home and found out!

Given that you have to melt the wax, deal with molten wax, deal with flammability hazards, remove the chain from the bike (or use what looks like a rather cumbersome dipping method) and apply it very often (at least in my experience), I see little advantage to using it.

I find the process to be fairly easy. I keep the wax in an old pot and put it on the stove on the smallest burner on the lowest setting and keep an eye on it while I'm cleaning up in the kitchen or going to be around for a bit. Once it's melted, I just pop the chain off with the quick link and drop it in. Wait a couple minutes and fish the chain out and reinstall. Take the bike out and go for a quick trip around the block to get all the flaky wax off.

I might try some commercially available liquid wax lubes next, but my fear is that they will not stay as clean and be actually more trouble to apply and wipe clean than a quick chain dip. Compared to conventional oil chain lubes, I think I like the wax dip. No messy rags, no greasy hands, etc...

I agree with pallen. I've been using White Lightning on the KHS and it's kind of pain to deal with. It makes a royal mess if I'm not super careful, and then you have to wait for it to "dry" and wipe off excess, etc. etc.

Pallen what do you do after you fish the chain out of the wax? Wait a minute until the wax cools enough to where you can handle it by hand? Do you hold it over the pot during that time to let any excess wax drip off? I can see the benefits of leaving the chain on and draping it through the wax, so just trying to think of how your method works in case I want to try it.

I hold it up over the pan, folding it a few times to keep it more compact and let it drip. You can tap it a little to get more to drop off, just don't overdo it, or you'll have a mess. It just takes a minute or two for it to cool down enough to handle carefully. The benefit is that you can leave the hot wax in one spot and not have to worry about sloshing it around. I'm also unclear about how to "drape" the chain through the wax. Not sure how I would hold a spring loaded chain under the wax. If you can work that out, leaving it on the bike should be fine. Removing and installing with a quicklink is a piece of cake. If I didn't have that option, I would probably look more closely at the draping method.

Wow talk about a buzz killer. Been waxing since the 1970s...no issues yet but yeah there is a risk in everything I suppose. I have dripped wax on my hands and while it stings a bit, I'm still alive. Just be careful like you should with any hot substance like boiling water for example.



[QUOTE
Now I'm going to put on my safety nanny hat: There are all kinds of safety issues that you need to take into account when using molten wax. As a molten mixture, the stuff presents a constant burn hazard. Spill it on your skin and the wax will trap the heat and cause a much more severe burn than other materials. If you use it like Alupang does, you will have to melt it somewhere and carry it to the bike. The possibility of spilling large amounts on yourself increases greatly when you start moving it around.

Canning wax does burn, as in flames. I learned this at a very tender age. My brother and I were doing Viking funerals with carved boats. We added canning wax to help consume the 'body'. It melted nicely and was burning steadily until it flared. It shot a flame 4 feet into the air from about a tablespoon of wax. We quit doing Viking funerals. Candles don't flare like that because of additives, like stearates, are used to slow down the burn process. You wouldn't want to add stearates to wax you use as a lubricant because it hardens the wax which is already almost too hard for lubrication applications.[/QUOTE]

Alupang, I just went back and read the first post again. I didn't realize you have the chain draped over the BB instead of one of the chain rings during this process. Doesn't that make a mess of wax all over the BB area as the waxed chain moves around?

Yep but I don't consider it a mess at all--I allow a build up of wax to protect that small area of the bottom bracket for the the chain to slide across. It just flakes off with your fingernail if you want to remove it. No worries.

How can my drape method that can completed in under 5 mins be cumbersome? It takes me longer to shave each morning. Compared to a filthy grimy chain, cassette and pulleys that require cleaning in nasty stinky solvents--isn't a clean chain, cassette and pulleys an advantage?

Any of the commercially available "wax" lubes attract grime like oil. Yuk. Glad to hear you are giving wax a try and see the advantages.

It is cumbersome compared to squeezing small drops from a bottle. Your method may take only 5 minutes to immerse the chain but you have a spend a whole lot longer for set up time. Melting a large quantity of wax...your picture looks like about 4 lbs...takes a lot of time. Based on previous experience with wax, I'd put it at in the neighborhood of 30 minutes. Then you have to carry the wax to the bike, dip it and clean up.

I can lube a chain with a wax based chain lube in a solvent in less than a minute...without any of the hazards of molten wax.

Now you are just making stuff up. I've been using a commercially available "wax" chain lube for nearly 20 years here in dusty Colorado. No grime attraction that I've ever noticed.

I don't count the time it takes to melt the wax because I just throw it on the stove while I do other household chores (like sweeping, cooking diner etc.) as it's melting. So the time to melt the wax doesn't "count" to me. The pot I use is small not 4 lbs. It takes about 15 mins on medium heat to melt fully.

Yes sure squeezing a few drops of oil or commercially available wax based lubes like White Lightning are real easy and quick do do...until you get to part where you have to break and clean the chain and cassette and pulleys with smelly solvents to remove the nasty filthy black goo off everything. I don't like to break my chain--I use expensive Shimano break-off pins and do not trust master links.

I tried White Lightning years ago and went back to wax for 2 reasons: 1) wax is almost free (I'm still using the same pot for years now) and 2) my drivetrain is cleaner. I don't see any advantage in paying more for a messy drivetrain that requires breaking chain to clean.

That's my key point here--I don't want to break my chain until I replace it with a new one. My waxing method allows me to have a clean waxed drivetrain without ever breaking the chain.

I use White Lightning exclusively. I clean the chain once when I install the chain. I don't have to 'break and clean the chain and cassette and pulleys with smelly solvents to remove the nasty filthy black goo off everything'...ever! The only time I take a chain off is to replace it or if I have to do something involving derailers.

Nor is my drivetrain dirty. That's the point of using a wax based lubricant. The wax doesn't attract any dirt because there is nothing for the dirt to adhere to. I use it for exactly the same as your method but it's easier to do because I can do it just before a ride, just after a ride, during a ride, on the road, in the backyard, etc. No oven needed.

And you really should try a master link. Far better than the break-off pins.

On another site, a fellow uses a body wax melting pot (available at beauty supply stores). That sounds much safer and more convenient.

Something like this?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31JpIvtejqL.jpg

I already have an oven. Sounds like using White Lightning works great for you and I agree it's nice to be able to carry a small bottle with you for lubing on the road or at work for example.

But still, it's a messy slimy substance compared to pure parrafin wax. You have to apply and wipe with rags and it's nasty stuff to get on your hands and cloths right? Plus you have to buy it-- 4oz costs about what, $6? I wouldn't be surprised to learn that lubing a chain with wax based lubes like White Lightning costs more than simply not lubing your chain (at all) and buying a new chain when it wears out early. I like parrafin wax price--it's almost free to use forever. I hate buying commercial products when I can find cheaper almost free alternatives.

Regarding master links--perhaps someday I will try them but I do have to ask why? Why would I ever need to break my chain?

I have a Master Link (I think that's what it is) on my KHS, came with it on there. I've climbed plenty of hills standing on the 22x26 gear and have never had a problem with it, ever. I removed my chain recently so that I could carry my bicycle in the car on a road trip to Destin, FL without having to worry about the chain damaging anything, or anything else in the car damaging the chain. I rolled up the chain and put it in a plastic bag.

The only other time I removed the chain was when I dropped it in a pan of degreaser to let it soak. So while I hardly lever remove the chain, it's nice to know that I can easily do so if needed.

this is what I do (as posted in another thread) and I'm beginning to do some lipidomics to figure out what is in the grease I'm using:

We actually save all of our used cooking oil/meat fat from our cast iron pan (olive oil and sunflower oil usually) and use that to lubricate our chains. When I ride behind my gf and she mashes, I can still smell the goodness.

Two bad points about this plan:

1. I park the bike outside my office at the uni and we have rabbit infestation problem at night. Unfortunately, the rabbits like the smell as well, and I often get rabbit hair (hare hair ... lol) in my drivetrain.
2. Often, when we run into the store for groceries or such, dogs like the lick the drivetrain. However, their owners don't like that and often try to pull the dogs away, which usually results in them urinating on the drivetrain.

So, if you can deal dog urine and hare hair, it's not a bad to recycle your used kitchen fat.

also just for the record, there is no such as PURE paraffin wax

:lol:

paraffin wax is a just mixture of different alkanes with certain desirable characteristics such as phase transition temps, flash point, rigidity, viscosity, density, resistivity and/or heat capacity.

anyone who states "pure paraffin" obviously has no idea how it's made/tested as the batch-to-batch variability is huge.

it's probably more of a mixture than my "home made lubricant" described above.

I'm not sure I see a clear winner on the debate of the virtues of a wax based lubricant vs melting paraffin and running a chain through it.

Recently I tried the method of melting paraffin and immersing a chain. I didn't need to break the chain, I just took it off the chain ring and let it droop into the liquid.

The results are far superior to the messy, black stuff from the lubricants I had been using -- none of them wax based I take it. Now if I drop a hat or glove and it lands on my chain, no worry. That to me is worth a little more time spent applying paraffin.

Maybe some day I'll try a wax based lubricant like White Lightning. If it really works just as well, maybe it is worth the switch.