BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > CRAFTING CORNER

Problems Filtering Wax

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PhilK:
Maybe try straining through something a little finer than a kitchen sieve

Frances:
I live in France and ir has been in the top 30's so I thought a solar oven was ideal for cleaning the dirty wax and ending up with beautiful clean wax. I made one, I used a strip of aluminium to put the wax on that I found in the local hardware store and left it for a couple of days. The result was not as good as I had hoped,I don't think that it was in the sun for long enough.  I gave in and put the old wax on the aluminium strip in the Halogen, water in a dish at the bottom meant that I ended up with a beautiful round disc wax. The temperature was best at 150.

Acebird:

--- Quote from: AUSSIE POM on November 10, 2016, 05:32:18 pm --- I though about melting the wax in a water boiler. Have a outlet tap just above the water line. Pour the wax into containers.  That way all the gunk would stay in the water ( Right)?
Cheers Perry

--- End quote ---

Not quite.  The outlet would have to be 1/8 to 1/4 higher then the water level.   If you just scrape off the gunk until you get clean wax you won't waste as much.  The gunk floats on top of the water so it will always be in the wax.  I use like a crock pot (fryer) that has a temp control.  At its lowest setting it is about 200 F water doesn't boil.  I turn it up to melt wax fast but you have to watch it when it hits the boiling point.  Using a kitchen sieve I do this three times.  The third time the wax has just a thin layer of gunk on the bottom that you can scrap clean.  The gunk you can chop up and use for beetle bait in your tray.

BeeMaster2:
Frances,
I also use a solar wax melter. If the wax is light colored and you use metallic colored metal, it often times does not get hot enough. I added black colored metal steal blocks in the bottom of the pan to melt the wax enough to go through the filter. Eventually I will paint the pan black so that it gets hotter.
Jim

jalentour:
I use a crock pot and water. 
The pure wax rises to the top and the impurities go to the bottom.
I slice off the impurities and keep the good wax, repeat until happy.
This is not my idea, found it on line from a bee site, wish I could attribute the author. 
Works well for me, found a cheap crock pot at Good Will. 
Best of luck.

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