Need an easy way to clean and melt wax

[jdesq]

How do you all clean and strain your wax. I save up the cappings for a few years and try to melt down and clean up. I use cheese cloth to strain and it does not work the greatest. Any one have any simple methods for this operation.

[tillie]

Any solar wax melter does a fabulous job....

here's mine:
http://beekeeperlinda.blogspot.com/2006/10/building-solar-wax-melter.html

[jdesq]

Hi tillie, nice blog! What I got out of your blog was that your solar melter did not work. Did I not read far enough? Have you made any new modifications to this? I like the concept of what you did  and think I can up with something along the same line that should do the trick, I thank you for sharing your ideas.

[tillie]

My solar melter works fabulously - but the first time I made it and tried to use it, it was the middle of October.  For the wax melter to work - anywhere - you  have to have days with several hours of sunny temps over 78 degrees - and that isn't usually the case in Atlanta in October. 

I used the solar wax melter quite successfully all summer long.  Occasionally I needed to set the wax out a second day if the day I chose for the first day actually was cooler or cloudy.

Linda T in Atlanta

[bailey]

you could try the hurricane gutave method.

sit through a hurricane, lose power for a week, run your life on portable generators, look down at the wax handling gear and have an idea!

place a collection pot on the ground. place a metal collander on top of the pot. place a t shirt cloth filter in the collander.   place the wax in the collander on the t shirt.   then place the unit in front of the generators exhaust.  you will have clean melted filtered wax in an hour.

put a little watter in the collection pot to allow the wax to separate.

Bailey

[rast]

 Tillie's melter works good in FL. using any clear wrap  saran, bisquine etc. over top of the wax and paper towels.

[annette]

I made Tillie's wax melter and it works great around here, but we get really hot, hot days in the summer. I had a piece of glass cut to fit the cooler.

[kathyp]

i melt mine in a double boiler through two thicknesses of cheese cloth and into the water.  whatever gunk is left in the wax goes to the bottom of the solidified wax disk. 

http://picasaweb.google.com/pearce.km/WaxCake#

[tillie]

Beautiful wax, kathyp - and in more quantity than I can get in one block in my solar wax melter!

Robert Brewer (well known Welsh honey judge) discourages filtering through cheesecloth - he says it leaves fibers and that silk or nylon work better FWIW

Linda T in Atlanta

[Cindi]

Hmmm....OK this brings out a question for me.  I have an enormous garbage bag of wax that I have been saving up for about 2 years in my freezer, keep adding wax scrapings, and so on to it.  It is huge!!!! 

The question is, do I need to wash the wax first before any kind of heating process to get rid of alot of gunk?  I really need to get onto this this winter, my freezer needs room for other stuff,    Have a most wonderful and awesome day, great health.  Cindi

[kathyp]

cindi-tillie, i have no sun.  cindi knows the problem  . i also had huge amounts from a couple of cutouts.

cindi, i did not wash mine just because i thought it would be pointless.  the wax was so dirty from the cutout.  on the one that was the worst, it took a couple of meltings to get it clean.  it was a lot of work. 

if yours is just dirty with honey and hive stuff, i'd think just melting and filtering it would be sufficient.

[hollybees]

Hi,
I used Linda's solar waxmelter and it worked great in the hot sun.
My wife and I tried melting the wax in a double boiler and pouring the melted wax through the paper towel
and it just sits there and won't go through it.
We ended up using 3 layers of cheese cloth, it's not as clean as it was in the solar wax melter but it was ok.

Check out this link for a melter, they took a "Presto Kitchen Kettle" and put a spigot on it.

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-PRESTO-POT-WAX-MELTER-FOR-CANDLES-SOAP-MAKING_W0QQitemZ260303696835QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item260303696835&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

I don't know why this didn't come out as a clickable link?? but you can copy and paste it or just do a search on ebay.

We bought the pot for about $20 and just poured the wax out "bee careful", but it melted the wax great!!

Good luck!!

[tillie]

I bought the Presto pot for melting the wax (after cleaning it and filtering it in the solar wax melter) and it's wonderful. 

I like the stainless steel double boiler better if I want to keep the wax as yellow as possible.  So if I'm pouring a wax block, and want it to smell and look like "new" ie, light and yellow as possible, the stainless steel doesn't change the wax's color (I bought the stainless steel double boiler on EBay as well) so that is my method of choice then.

The Presto Pot melts easily, evenly, and quickly; the spigot works well; but I have two problems with it:

1.  It does gradually discolor the wax - looks more butterscotch coming out of it
2.  The spigot leaves about an inch of wax in the pot.  You can slant the pot to pour the rest out, but the debris (very tiny debris) accumulates in the bottom so slanting the pot to get the last bit includes any debris that was still in the wax.

Linda T in Atlanta

[hollybees]

Linda,
Thanks so much for the info!! my wife and I are just learning. I do the bees she does the wax.

We loved your blogspot the video's are fantastic!! We learned alot. 

My wife had to melt the wax down a couple of times because she had the wrong wick and the flame would just go out.
I did indeed get darker for sure, but we didn't really know why.

When it was still hot here in MI I tried your wax melter and the wax was very clean and light colored.
I think we'll just freeze the rest and wait till next summer to process it.

Thanks again,
keep up the great work....

Paul

[Brian D. Bray]

A Solar Wax Melter will work anywhere you get sunny days, even up here in the PNW.