Getting wax from comb?

[farmer joe]

I have about 5-10 pounds of cappings/comb from crush and straining a few supers today. I'm going to let them drip overnight but would like to somehow clean it up to get wax.
I'd like to hear how exactly to do this.
Thanks for any tips!

[riverrat]

I use a crock pot and water. Heat it up until the wax melts then let it set until it hardens remove from pot and scrape bottom. Some times I run it through tis process 2 or 3 times. The wax gets whiter with each time This would be time consuming with 5 to 10 lbs. You may be able to use a large pot on the stove over a very low fire

[sierrabees]

Someone on an earlier thread reccomended straining it though an old T-shirt. I tried that this year and it worked great. My wife sews a bag out of the T-shirt, then I fill the bag up with cappings, rinse them with a lot of cold water and stick it in a crock pot like riverrat reccomends and go to bed. Next morning I tie up the edges of the bag and hang it over the crock pot to let all the wax drain. All the slum-gum stays in the bag, all the soluble material stays in the water, and when it cools I have a nice block of very clean wax that pops right out of the pot. This is a slow process but it actually only takes up about ten minutes of my time for each batch. The old T-shirts full of slum-gum make great fire starters when winter comes.

[Jim Fischer]

Paper coffee filters also work great.
Cheap, too.

[farmer joe]

Thanks that's great. I read about solar melters, that will be a great option for next year.

[Michael Bush]

Try a search and you'll find MANY discussions on this subject.