Chain Waxing

I’ll dive into his articles. But I’m already realising that obviously nothing is ever going to truly compare to a hot wax.
I’ve been cleaning my chains with a combination of putting them in an ikea sandwich bag with white spirits and hot soapy water in the kitchen sink. Seeing a chain in the sink delights my wife.
I’ve got a slow cooker that hasn’t been used for years, so it might as well be used for something.

Seeing a chain in the sink delights my wife.

I keep an old washing up bowl and dish brush in the shed. white spirit, thorough scrub, then dry with a clean rag.

in the shed

aka "in the kitchen" for anyone still living in London's Famous Shithole

recent convert, waxing is loads better than oil

Added molybdenum to a diy wax mixture, bit disappointed the chain doesn’t gleam anymore.

Tried the Loctite degreaser on a new chain and it did fuck all.

I'm going back to horrible petrochemicals. What's the best shit I'm likely to find in a hardware store here?

Commercial citrus floor cleaner works a trick but attacks steel, possibly not enough for concern.

I have white spirit or pure turpentine. Which of the two would be better at stripping factory lube?

I do exactly the same. Seems okay, I usually only remember to top about three mins into the ride, though ...

Toolstation sell degreaser for not too much, if that's close enough? https://www.toolstation.com/home-strip-super-strength-degreaser/p28838

I’d go with turps.

When I was a boy, white spirit was called "Turpentine substitute", although they are now technically different; white spirit is a turpentine substitute, but not all turpentine substitutes are white spirit.
White spirit is more volatile, so it should leave less residue to interfere with the bonding of your wax to the steel.

We did pretty well during ALPI. Think I only missed one night of reapplication.

Yeah, if you google it, white spirit is mineral turps and turpentine is white fuck arragh whatever.

I used one of them and it kinda went cloudy white - like it's separating into layers. I wonder if that's something to do with the jar I used. Water maybe got it? Or does white spirit/turps do that? I've used one of them before and it separated into a clear layer and a cloudy white layer. Very annoying.

White spirit is a fairly narrow cut product from refining crude oil. It is mainly straight and branched chain saturated alkanes.'Odourless' versions have very low levels of (smelly) aromatics. White spirit has limited solvency.
Turpentine was distilled from (pine) tree roots, and had a distinctive smell, from its constituent terpenes. It had greater solvency than White Spirit.

Anyone running 12sp? This is cheap
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325071077734

I’m wary of buying chains off eBay and Amazon these days, too many fakes. Looks like a good deal if real tho.

It's NoPinz. They're legit company here. I use their skinsuits. They'd be doing their reputation some harm if they were flogging shady chains.

Cool, thanks for clearing that up.

Nice little crock pot and chain hanger at Victor’s place.

https://youtu.be/httL2SI2Vmc

Brought to you by Dräft.

I am doing the sous vide hot wax in the bag from Silca and then topping up with the latest drip on stuff. I've read doing the re-immersion every 500km but I'm more toward 1000km so will see how it goes in terms of chain wear.

Whilst getting the factory gunk off is a PITA, the boil in the bag is so incredibly simple. Not sure if it'll be as straightforward in winter (which will be 50/50 off/road).

I do like his little pot and hanger: https://www.cyclowax.com/products/clean-chain-starter-kit

But you can't really argue with £15 slow cooker. :)

I switched to drip-waxing the chain on my road & TT bikes, but considering going all in with hot waxing.

Question: After grimy rainy rides , how do you rewax the chain? Do you just give it a good wipe and it goes into the hot wax, and you rinse it around? And then the grime settles on the bottom of the wax puck (as I could see on the previous pages), you just scrape it off, and happy days?

I used to just dump it into the hotpot. Now, I'll poor boiling water on it to strip off the grip and then dump it into the wax. (and scrape the wax puck before melting each time, yeah)

I've also got some Squirt I've been using. I don't think it last as long as paraffin which is annoying and it tends to drop off in black chunks so it's more like having oiled a chain which makes it less useful.