# beeswax pastilles (pellets)



## GaSteve

Does anyone know how to make these? I couldn't find anything searching this site or even Google. They are the little beads of beeswax that you find in craft stores. I've had a lot of requests for them because they are called for in recipes for many candles and other crafts. Customers who ask for them don't seem to be interested any other form of wax - even the little 1 oz. blocks. The pellets appear to be flat on one side and round on the other so I thought dropping barely melted wax on a cold surface might work but it just splattered.


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## jbeshearse

deleted post - proprietary


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## awebber96

I have no idea if this would work, but have you tried dripping wax into very cold water? 

I know that Dippin Dots ice cream is made using liquid nitrogen, but I don't think you want to mess with (or pay for) that stuff.


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## burns375

awebber96 said:


> I have no idea if this would work, but have you tried dripping wax into very cold water?
> 
> I know that Dippin Dots ice cream is made using liquid nitrogen, but I don't think you want to mess with (or pay for) that stuff.


Dropping wax into cold water should work. Basically you super cool a droplet of wax before gravity has time to flatten out. 

When purifying/cleaning wax from a tear out. I sprayed a bucket of semi-hot strained wax and water mix with cold water from a outside hose (high pressure spray type nozzle) and formed basically powder wax. Super small granules. The powder melted very quickly but was messy to deal with. Small spheres would be easier to handle.


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## KQ6AR

I also believe its somehow evenly dropped in water.


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## spreerider

what about half cooled wax through an extrude cutter similar to cutting some pastas?


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## WarriorWoman

Try this website naturalllivingmamma.com/tag/make-your-own-bees-wax-pellets/ 

they have a step by step way of doing it.


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## Rader Sidetrack

The URL in post #7 doesn't work - there are 3 "L"s instead of 2 "L"s. Here is a working link:
http://naturallivingmamma.com/2012/09/10/how-to-make-bees-wax-drops-for-easier-crafting/

However, the method offered at that link results in beeswax "blobs" rather than uniform pellets.


I don't know how wax pellets are _typically _made in the modern industrial world. But the issues in making round pellets out of molten beeswax are similar to those faced by 18th century bullet makers. Their solution was the drop tower, where "drops" of molten material were dropped into a pool of water. Due to the height of the tower, surface tension formed the drop into a mostly round form by the time it hit the cooling water.

A number of these drop towers still exist as historical artifacts in the US and other places around the world. See the link for more info.



And as a special Christmas treat,  a paper on a modern (2004) method of making wax pellets in a specialized machine version of a drop tower - it appears to be less than 6 ft tall:
http://www.chemeng.tsinghua.edu.cn/scholars/wangtj/Publications/2004-CET-Wax-Granulation.pdf


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## KatyBusyBee

They are made using large auger extruder machines (think huge heated meatgrinder that cuts off the wax as it comes out into a cooling water flow). that is also how they make the raw plastic pellets for the plastics industry. You can buy them from China via Alibaba for about $8,000 and up.


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## jredburn

The way they make lead buckshot for shotguns is to pour melted lead through a sieve and let it fall a long ways (100ft_) into a pool of water. The size of the hole in the sieve determines the size of the pellets. You could do the same with wax only you would not have to let it fall very far as you don't care if it is not perfectly round.


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## SWM

Okay, this is a very old thread but I'm raising the question again to see if we've learned any more about this in the last 4-5 years. The question is how to get beeswax in pellet, powder or other small form so it can be easily measured. Same question from the OP. I know someone who uses a manual food grater but that's too time consuming for large quantities. I'm thinking there must be something that would grind small blocks of beeswax into powder or at least very small pieces. Again, this is for those making soaps, lotions, lip balm, etc. Easy to measure for their recipes.
What ideas come to mind?


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## JWPalmer

Why measure volumetrically? Much easier to use a scale and weigh out the amount you need. Far more accurate too.


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## SWM

JWPalmer said:


> Why measure volumetrically? Much easier to use a scale and weigh out the amount you need. Far more accurate too.


That's a good question JW and perhaps someone here can answer it...someone who uses beeswax for this purpose. I'm just the beekeeper with the wax. I didn't even know you could buy beeswax in small pellets until recently when customers started asking for it. They've been getting it from the local health food store, probably shipped in from who knows where.


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