Wax Processing Question!

[Hill's Hivery]

Has anyone tried to use an old crock pot (Slow cooker) on low setting to use as a wax pot? I don't need to pour the wax out after it is melted. Just wanted something to make hand dipped in without the great expense.

[honeyman46408]

WORKS

I used one (still do to bleach wax) till I got a Prest-O-Pot

[kbee]

With an old crockpot how do you regulate the temp? I thought hand dipped candles needed a fairly tight temp range and most of the crockpots I've seen have just a high and low setting.

[Hill's Hivery]

honeyman46408....How do you bleach wax in a crock pot?

[Black Creek]

i've been waiting for someone else to reply on this crock pot thing, but no one has yet.

i read on here somewhere about someone(coulda been honeyman46408)using a crock pot for small batches of wax.

water and wax in the crock(mine has a multi-temp.knob)let it stew for a while and the water helps pull out some of the impurities that are water soluble and the impurities that aren't are for the most part heavier than the wax, so a lot of that seperates too. so you let it all cool off, and plop out the wax. there'll be a thin layer of junk on the bottom of the cake of wax... scrape it off with a spoon or something. you'll notice the water left over has changed colour a bit depending on the wax.

i tried this on a small batch of wax that was a bit on the brown side and it cleaned it up quite a bit.

[Black Creek]

after reading whoever's post it was about the crock pot, i saw one of the German beekeeper video's on here that showed them doing essentially the same thing but with a giant wood fired kettle. It was how they harvested the wax after pressing honey out of it. the crock pot is a bit small, but i suppose you could get one of those large kettles that you put on an outdoor propane burner and do the same thing.

[honeyman46408]

Hill`s
I got this one from PK & Bizzy
After melting wax in the Crock Pot add Proexide and let it boil and yuky stuff will come to the top.

I did this with some wax that was verry GRAY and unuseable and it turned out not as nice as regular capping wax but useable also I didnt catch it when it boiled and it boiled over so the yuky stuff ended on the table, so BEE careful !!

When ever I melt wax (Crock Pot or Presto-Pot) I always have water in the bottom to catch dirtys and such.

[Hill's Hivery]

What do you use to "strain" the wax, or do you even bother?

[honeyman46408]

I strain the wax through a piece of old sweat shirt when it comes out of the melter then on the next melt I strain it through a paper towel but when maeking candles ect the Prest-O-Pot has water in the bottom just below the pour spout to collect more "stuff" and every time I melt it I get more "stuff" ;)

I said before I am NO eXpert but having fun learning.

[GerryL]

Do you have to melt the wax twice? I have no Idea on how to process wax. Is there a how too, on a web site, or could someone explain briefly.

NewBee Gerry Thanks

[honeyman46408]

Gerry
As I have said I am no eXpert, you don`t have to melt it twice if you melt, strain, filter and make candles ect at one time.

I think most people melt it in the wax melter first to seperate the wax from honey and make it eaiser to store till later when they want to make something, this reduces the chance of wax moths getting in your wax and distroying it. I have opened a bucket of cappings to find wax moth larva not a prity site. :(

Bullseyebill uses two Prest-O-Pots one above another and he drains the wax from the first one down into the second one to pour candles ect ect.

There are many ways to do many different things in Beekeeping.

So keep the questions comeing so we can all learn more.

That reminds me my wife ask me to make a candle for our Daughter in law :rolleyes: