From RAW Bees Wax,

Hi Guys & Gals
My son and I Keep Honey Bees at our farms
not to many but a few Hives and we do get some wax, we have kept bees for about 3 years and still trying to find a good way to get the honey from wax and all clean wax is a sorta mess, hahah

But to the point;
We have raw wax and how do you guys clean filter the comb and melt with out a burn?
ok after we have that cleaned melted down and solid.
do we heat wax and add whatevers the mix and pour into a PVC pipe?
and push out with our press?
what are ya doing?
Cuz its gona be a bear to get this out of a pipe,, lol
never mind clean the raw wax,,

Please let us know how this is done, or can we just pan lube with clear wax?


Okay Thanks
Sean & Patrick Campbell

The big tall cauldron that comes with a turkey fryer is your friend here. Put about 12 inches of water in it and bring it up to a light boil. Now add your wax a bit at a time till the pot is 3/4 full or you run outta wax. Stir it well for awhile, turn off the flame and walk away. At least 1 day later comback and tip the pot over onto a clean sheet/tarp etc. Take a propane torch and heat the sides of the pot evenly and gently till the block comes out of the pot. Water will go everywhere when you do this...just so you know. Scrape the bottom of the block til you hit clean beeswax with no cloudiness or caramel looking attributes to it. The sugars/propolis/garbage will be in the water/scrapings you just spilled everywhere....do it outside and ma nature will take care of that mess for you.

Now you can re-melt the wax and make it into useable sized bricks/loafs whatever. I use direct heat for this, but one must really pay attention to the temp of the wax if you want it to remain pretty yeller and not brown. A double boiler is a great thing to use if you have one or can find pots that nest together just so.

I do not mess with lube sticks. I make the lube recipe and store it in mini-loafs. I melt a bit and dump it into the sizer when I need it. Pure beeswax by itself only works as a stand alone lube in Very HOT weather otherwise it throws wierd 1st shot flyers, and the occassinal what the hell? flyers. You will need to add some vaseline or grease to it to soften it and make it friendly, as pure beeswax is not a friendly lube all by itself....too brittle.

There are a ton of recipes on here and depending on what you are shooting most will work, but some are better than others. I could suggest a recipe but 30 others will do the same.....THERE IS GOOD REASON FOR THE FACT THAT 1000 RECIPES ARE AVAILABLE FOR YOUR PLEASURE........MOST OF THEM WORK FOR SOMEONE SOMEWHERE. Dissecting lube recipes can make a man go batsh*t crazy...be careful out there. :mrgreen:

Sean

This how I do it and it works. This link isn't my work but this is how its done.
http://lonestarhomestead.wordpress.c...clean-beeswax/
Don

Put your wax in some panny hose and sink it in a pan of water with something heavy. lead will work if your not planing on using it on body parts. Use a double boiler to do this so you don't overheat the wax in the bottom of the pan once it all melted shut off heat and wait to cool.The wax will be on top of the water and just cut around pan edge and lift out chunk all little crud should be in the panny hose on the bottom. i'm going to try some silk screen and see if it will work also.

something like a 16 or 20-x silk screen would work.
a 200-x might let the melted wax through, but I wouldn't bet on it.
something like 80-100 would be near pantyhose.
you could build a hoop to fit the pot and put the wax under it and boil the water allowing the wax to filter through the screen, or just use some pantyhose on the same frame set-up.

The important part is to melt the mass of beeswax with water. This removes the sugars/propolis and such from the wax. Simply melting raw beeswax without the water will leave the sugars/propolis in the wax. Alot of people who report "burnt wax" on the bottom of the pan are seeing the results of beeswax that was not de-sugared properly. How you go about it is less important than doing it. I tried the wax in cloth tricks and found them to be more messy than just boiling the water/wax together, but whatever works for you. The end result is the important thing here.

How clean does everyone get their wax? I end up with little black specks in mine and have been curious if its ok to use. Or do i need to get some finer silk screen. And what temp does everyone bring the wax up to I stay close to 150 or a little over just enough for the whole pot to become liquid. This takes some time to do and was wondering if i could crank it up a little to cut down wait time.

If you have black specs in your beeswax it was not thoroughly/properly processed over simmering water. It was likely just melted and strained.

You can heat the wax a bit hotter than you are and then kill the heat....let it sit there without disturbing it until it just starts to congeal/cool, then pour off the top 80%...this will leave all the "specs" in the bottom. The specks will not likely hurt anything anyway, but I for one am really bothered by bee parts/propolis/sugars/dirt in my beeswax. The simmering water trick rids you of all the above. You have to be slightly knutsy cuckoo to make your own loobs anyway....what's one more step? :confused:

I like the idea of your "simmering water trick" Think we are going to give a small batch a try,,
First il get out raw wax cleaned and in a useable sized bar and then look for some Mixes
we are loading 357/38, .45 acp, and 44 mag & Spl for now, but hoping to step up to 30-30, so "Bee" nice to find a mix for all of them I have a Cnubawax slug we got from lslubes so may have to look more into that

Il let ya know our results


Patrick

I always cook my wax in water it does help get the nasties out. I have been doing it in a deep fat fryer so its hard to get much done wife would kill me for using turkey fryer pot. I have been putting my wax inside a silk screen bag to help trap some nasty stuff but i'm not sure its necessary may try again today. I like to just heat mine to get it all melted in the water shut off heat and let it cool. when your done pull the puck out and you will need to scrape some nasty stuff off the bottom to get to pretty yellow wax. Change water every batch. Holy cow this is a lot of work. Should just buy some if i decide to make some lube. lol. Note to self don't do this unless u have the wax already, call randy rat buy his would be way easier and save days work unless your bored.

I use to be a sideline beekeeper with 40 hives and the cleanest wax I ever produced was using a solar beeswax melter. My guess is that a Goggle search will turn one up. Basicly it was a solar panel type on an incline with a glass cover. Sold mine with my bees,hives,extractor,wax melter etc. years ago.

Similar to ones I built

http://www.beesource.com/build-it-yo...ar-wax-melter/

I have gotten wax from two fellers here locally one guy just melts it into 15lb blocks and it comes with all the bee parts/junk/dirt a guy would ever need. The other feller puts all his yearly cappings into a large oval stock tank full of water and cooks it. He then drains the water from out from under the wax the slices and dices the "sheet"....... his wax is gorgeous. I actually have to fight the temptation to chew on the wax I get from that feller. The price is the same so guess who I get mine from now? I had actually though about building one of them solar melters until I found the second fella. Now I do not need to bother...looked like very functional rigs when I researched them a few years back...now I just get to be lazy and buy it all ready to go.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Case Stuffer

I use to be a sideline beekeeper with 40 hives and the cleanest wax I ever produced was using a solar beeswax melter. My guess is that a Goggle search will turn one up. Basicly it was a solar panel type on an incline with a glass cover. Sold mine with my bees,hives,extractor,wax melter etc. years ago.

Similar to ones I built

http://www.beesource.com/build-it-yo...ar-wax-melter/

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This is the way to go! ~$50 to build it and free to operate it for a lifetime.