Recovering Wax

[Terri Yaki]

I didn't see a suitable spot to put this so I'll put it here. I've read several ways to recover wax and used a combination of those methods to filter some yesterday. My mentor uses a crock pot and an expired T-shirt. They put water in the bottom of the crock pot and suspend the T-shirt and put the wax above it and let it heat for a while. I have some pretty big cheesecloth bags that I've had for longer than I can remember so I used them instead of a T-shirt and it worked amazingly well. the comb that I used was as old and dark as it could be and when I was done, it still held its comb shape but I don't think there's much wax left in it, if any. The wax dripped through the center of the cheesecloth so the crockpot didn't get all waxed up and the disc popped right out after it cooled off. Here's pictures of the disc. I don't see any reason to re-filter it.

[The15thMember]

That looks great!  I do something similar, but I don't have anywhere to suspend the wax, so I just let it the cheesecloth bag float in the water, and then remove the bag with all the slumgum before I let it cool. 

[Terri Yaki]

The cheesecloth bags that I have are pretty big. I was able to tuck the tops of them under the crock pot legs and still have enough cloth to place the comb in. When I removed the remaining comb, the bag wasn't clogged up with wax.

[The15thMember]

So you just had the whole crock pot covered in the bag basically?  I'd be worried that would be a fire hazard, but not sure if that's rational or not.

[Terri Yaki]

That is correct but I had the pot on low and wasn't the least bit concerned about a fire.

[The15thMember]

Okay, if it's just on low.  Sometimes turn the pot up to high for just a little while at the end, to get the last stubborn bits to melt, and I don't know if I'd be comfortable doing that then.  But a little patience on low would probably work too. 

[animal]

the only way I can see it catching fire is if you somehow got the wax in contact with the heating element itself and it could get oxygen to it.
The way my crock pot is made, I don't see any way to make that happen without trying really hard to make it happen.

Mine actually has an aluminum liner between the crock and the element.. pretty sure if I removed the liner, tossed some wax on the element, reassembled everything and turned it on, it would make a bunch of smoke but no flames.

Can't speak for all models of the things, though.

with water in the crock the temp will be regulated to a little over 212 ... as long as the wax is below 350 (whatever the boiling point of the wax is) it shouldn't ignite from a spark. ... at 450 or so it could spontaneously ignite.

I never put oil and a thermometer in a crock pot and left it on, but I'd bet it would be under 350

[The15thMember]

Yeah, it's probably not too big of a risk.  I just know how hot the exterior of a crock pot can get, and I'd be worried about having something in contact with that for potentially like 6 hours, but it's probably not hot enough to actually cause the cotton cheese cloth to burn or smoke.  If you were using some synthetic fabric though, it could melt it. 

[animal]

uhh .. If it gets that hot enough to melt polyester on the outside (unless the crock was completely empty or wrapped in the fabric) I don't think I would use it at all.

Pretty sure there's a thermal limit switch in all of them to keep them from getting that hot. .. never actually took one apart, tho.

[The15thMember]

I just looked up the melting point of polyester, so I'm apparently wrong about that. 

I was just thinking in terms of what I'd be comfortable setting up and leaving relatively unattended for long periods of time, but I guess my concerns are unfounded.

[animal]

well, it's always the better idea to err on the safe side ... unless having fun is involved

offhand .... can't think of a way to make a flaming crock pot fun ... but it sounds like it could have potential .. I'll give it some thought 

[BeeMaster2]

Crock pot?s definitely do have thermal regulation switches on them. Most have three settings or variable potentiometers. Other wise they would burn every meal ever put in them. I have repaired a few of them, they also have a hard wired fuse in case the thermostats go bad. Eventually the fuses open due to age which is why they stop working.
Jim Altmiller

[Terri Yaki]

I inherited a crock pot that didn't work once and out of curiosity, I took it apart. For some reason, all I remember about that was that the nut holding it together was bottom center and the bolt was cut off short at the nut. So short that I couldn't get it to thread back on so I passed it along to someone else.

[animal]

That makes more sense .. to have a fuse as a safety rather than a limit switch(less chance of failure). A burner control on a stove can fail in a way that it runs the burner wide open and was thinking it might be possible for the crock pot control to do the same thing. It seemed like with everything enclosed, the crock pot would need a safety of some sort and wrongly thought "limit switch". .. so the fuse would be a thermal cutoff type ?

[Terri Yaki]

Did another batch yesterday and here's some pictures for you. The cheese cloth seems to be plastic of some sort (rayon, nylon, IDK), which probably helps with easier separation of the residue.

First one is after a reloading of the pot after meltdown of initial load, second is after completely done but still in the pot and the third one is after removing the residue from the cheesecloth. A hole has developed in the bottom of the cheesecloth and is letting small amounts of debris through but since I'm just using the wax to coat frames, I'm not worried about it. The crock pot does have some wax on the inside of it but not enough to make me change my MO. After cooling, the wax has shrunk and pulled away from the wall of the crock pot and removal of the disc is easy with a fork. As far as I'm concerned, this is the way for me and if I wanted cleaner wax, I would just filter it again.