If your concerned about the cost of getting all the things you need to get your chain waxed, maybe these tips can help. Half bags of Silca Secret Hot Melt are here: vitalbikechain...
any experiments with paraffin wax? i've read on zero friction's comment section you're about to do some. i'm against supporting boutique bike brands like silca/molten/rex. we should find an alternative, but not just inadequate descriptions like "candle" or "gulf canning" or "food grade", rather specific products from e.g. dunawax, kerawax, or others. that way it's repeatable between people, like top wax lubricants are, instead of the difference between it working for one person and not working for the other being the difference of the actual kind of wax they could get hold of.
I actually did a test with Gulf wax and I was surprised how well it did. The only problem is finding a dry drip-on that will match up and not just make a gunky mess. If you buy a $40 Silca bag (or similar) you’ll probably get 30-40 waxings out of it depending on your pot size.
@@vitalbikechains i don't doubt it's still economical enough, but i don't like the idea of a 2000% (yes) larger markup for 30% (?) better performance. but it has to be consistent. there are brand name pure paraffin waxes for cosmetics/confectionery where we could just find out which one works and tell everyone: "don't buy that stuff, that's silly, kerawax 407 (i'm making this up here as an example) gets you 90% there".
@@vitalbikechainsbetween paraffin waxes that melts at 54-56 °C and another that melts at 60-62 °C (130-133 °F, 140-144 °F respectively), which one would you choose? the only thing i can find a melting point is silca, and that melts at 72 °C (162 °F) according to the zero friction blog
@@markifi melting point is definitely something the chain wax suppliers consider in there formulations. My bike sits out in the Florida sun, trunk of the car, even our garage is boiling hot. When I heat up Silca wax, it melts at 148F. I would go with the higher MP version. Keep me posted. I’d like to do a video on your findings.
@markifi there will always be diminishing returns and it costs companies more to get those diminishing returns too. Just look at wholesale bearings. An absolute junk bearing for your hubs can cost under $1, a decent one will cost $3-4, a very good one will cost $15 and the very best may cost $50. It's significantly harder to machine things to tighter and tighter tolerances. This is also true for getting more pure metrics for wax and getting finer tungsten carbide for wax which Silca does. That said, Silca's cheapest wax isn't terribly expensive. You can skip wax altogether and go with Silca Synergetic and you have a lube that will last you many years without the hassle of waxing and getting a lot of the benefits
