Waxing bicycle chain with ultrasonic cleaner
Update on March 11th: Josh from Silca himself responded to my post on Reddit; He says that using a container inside an ultrasonic cleaner for waxing reduces the effectiveness of the cleaner greatly. Keep that in mind!
Today I waxed my bicycle chain (Shimano HG-601) with an ultrasonic cleaner. The inspiration was an interview by Dylan Johnson with Josh Poertner about marginal gains.
I ride year round in all kind of weather.
Wax has the benefit that it isn’t washed away when wet. Also dust, grime and mud don’t stick to the chain. The downside is that it takes a bit more work to setup. I’ve used squirt wax chain lube for a couple of years now but due to it’s way of application (fluid in a bottle) it will wash away quicker than a solid waxed chain.
After the marginal gains interview I started watching Josh his method of waxing a chain where he mentions using an ultrasonic cleaner:
MGTV: How to Hot Melt Wax Your Bicycle Chain — YouTube
For realz: If this is your first time waxing a chain, please check out Josh his movies about cleaning / degreasing chains first.
My process:
In those movies the creators are using a crock pot for melting the wax. I’ve tried that but in the end my wife was not amused about me using kitchen equipment for filthy bike parts. To be honest, I wasn’t amused either, the process took too much room in my (smallish) household since we don’t have a shed / garage.
I ended up using my ultrasonic cleaner (HBM Machines 2.5liter) and a single walled Dopper 1 liter bottle for the wax. This meant I could store the bottle in our cupboard next to the ultrasonic cleaner and I didn’t take up any real estate.
You can see in the picture the whole setup is smaller than our coffee machine.
I used Josh his movie (referenced above) for the temperatures when to submerse the chain and when to remove the chain. He states the temperatures in Fahrenheit, so I’ve added them below in Celsius as well.
This was my process today:
- Plug in the Ultrasonic cleaner and add boiling water from the electric kettle
- Turn the Cleaner on and let it heat the water to 65 degrees Celsius (150 Fahrenheit) My cleaner can heat the water without ultrasonic cleaning (there are two buttons; One for turning it on and heating, another to start ultrasonic cleaning)
- Fill the metal bottle with wax pellets from the Silca bag and place it in the Ultrasonic Cleaner
- Coffee moment: Wait until all the wax is molten, can take quite a while
- Might not be necessary: Wash your hands to make sure they’re not contaminating the chain with stuff you’ve touched while waiting (chocolate cookies in my case)
- Get an old spoke and bend it so you can thread it through the chain. You’ll use the spoke so that you can hang it later to drip the excess wax but also long enough so you can get it from the bottle without putting your fingers in the hot wax! Practise getting it out the bottle without the chain and hanging it if you think you might make a right-ol mess out of it.
- Put the chain-spoke in the wax, it will make the wax go hard since the chain is colder than the melting point of the wax. Let it heat for a couple of minutes. When you check the chain there should not be solid pieces of wax hanging of the chain. Also check the temperature on your Ultrasonic Cleaner PID, it will re-heat the whole basin to 65 degrees (150F).
- Press the ultrasonic button, I’ve used 10 minutes — 65 degrees C (150F) on power high and ultrasonic high. Grab the spoke and whisk the chain a couple of times during this 10 minutes, teh interwebs said that would immerse the wax better
- Coffee moment: My cleaner stops making noise when the 10 minute cycle is done so I can bugger off and do other stuff
- I’ve started another cycle of 10 minutes, 65C/150F, high power with the same settings except ultrasonic LOW, I read somewhere (Reddit?) that it could immerse the chain / rollers better
- Coffee moment: Might be better to switch to something else than coffee; caffeine overload
- Do not remove the chain after the second cycle of 10 minutes, the wax is fairly hot and will drip out of your chain according to Josh
- Instead; set the temperature on the ultrasonic cleaner to 57C (135F), walk away and come back after 5–10 minutes, the whole basin will have cooled to exactly 57C (135F) due to the PID controlled heater in the cleaner
- My cleaner shows the actual temperature, so I know it’s 57C (135F) when I pull the chain. I hang the chain right over the bottle so it leaks excess wax in the bottle for re-use and doesn’t make a mess out of the kitchen. (Wife-cycling-acceptance-factor is important, making a mess is detrimental to that factor)
It took about 5–10 minutes for the chain to cool to room temperature, I forced myself to not touch it with sheer enormous willpower…, probably unnecessary but didn’t want to contaminate the wax in any way.
During this waiting time I put the cleaner back to 65C (150F), so I could wax the next chain after this one has cooled. That took 10 minutes.
Second chain process was idential, and after two chains this is what it looks:
Aftermath:
I then removed the metal Dopper bottle (be careful with the hot wax) from the cleaner and let it cool down. The ultrasonic cleaner was crispy clean, since it only heated / vibrated water from the tap.
Some notes; I could touch the metal bottle with my hands at 65C (150F) to grab it or hold it while whisking the chain. The wax would have probably hurt if I had touched it directly but the heat transfer of the metal bottle to my fingers was fine (not pleasurable but okay) YMMV.