# cleaning wax



## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

Read the other post on cleaning wax. Use their methold/s.


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## wabeeman (Dec 3, 2010)

Seems like every year I try something different...any way I've tried it always seems like more work than it should be.:scratch:
I first put my cappings in a plastic pail with a honey gate. I put this in a an old freezer that I rigged with a heat lamp and a remote thermostat (Walter T Kelley). Set stat @ 120-130 and let it set for a few days. What ever honey is left will settle out and you can then drain it off the bottom.
For the actual melting I've gone through several methods but the one that seems to work best is to rig up some sort of container with a hose inlet on the bottom and a spout toward the top. I first saw this done with a 55 gal. drum...the size that fit my operation at that time was an old pressure cooker pot that my wife threw out. Shovel the cappings into the "melter" and fill to just below the spout with water. Put some sort of heat source underneath (I used a propane burner) and start heating. NOTE: this is not UL approved! :no: Should only be done outside and away from any flammables. Once the wax is melted you hook a hose up to the inlet on the bottom and slowly fill with water. As the water rises the wax will float up and out the spout. It's handy to have some hardware cloth or screen of some sort to keep the big chunks of floaty from the spout.
For filtering, my local restaurant supply grocery sells deep fry oil filters. These are cone filters made of paper. If you double the filters, with the seems opposing as directed, these do an excellent job of filtering. First time out you'll have to buy the frame but it doesn't cost much and has ears that rest perfectly on a 5 gal pail.
If you have more cappings to melt simply unhook the hose, drain your container down a ways, refill with cappings and start the whole process over. When you're finished just shut off the hose, shut off the burner and just let everything set and cool. When cool you can peel/break the wax cake off the top of your melter, scrap the crud off the bottom (there won't be much) and set it aside for next time. There'll be a bunch of slum gum in the bottom of the melter, I usually just till it into the garden. Another advantage here is that whatever honey is left in the cappings settles out. It's all mixed up with water and slum gum, so it can't be used, but it's no longer in the wax either.
The wax blocks that this process produces still need to be filtered more. I usually filter twice more and any time I empty out whatever melter I'm using, always using two of the grease filters. (incidentally, these make great fire starters). For your subsequent meltings you might be able to use your presto pot.
This year I welded a stainless spout into a small bottling a tank that I outgrew and used that as my melter. It worked great and was very controllable but unless you have an extra one laying around it's kind of expensive. This tank was big enough to yield about 80# of good clean wax per session.

Don't worry about your first experience, I'm sure your next one will be much worse . Kidding. The nice thing about working with bees wax is if you mess up just throw that wax back in the pot and start over. Nothing lost but a little time. Good luck!


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## shepherd (Feb 1, 2006)

Thanks for the advice and encouragement


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