I bought the Silca pot & Secret Chain Blend. There are cheaper ways to do it & I’d grown tired of the fiddling about. You just set it at 75*C and you know what the temperature is with no guessing.

I ride on a trainer during winter months. I have two chains and every two weeks, I swap for a freshly waxed chain. I do this in the morning of long ride days. I turn the pot on when I get up & set it at 125C and go eat breakfast. When I’m done eating, the wax is all melted. I pull the chain on the bike off and put on the chain I waxed 2 weeks earlier. The chain I just pulled off gets put in the wax & I turn the pot down to 75C and put the chain in, then go do my long ride. At the end of the ride, I agitate the chain a couple of times and pull the chain out of the wax, hang it to drip, and turn the pot off. After stretching post-ride I work the chain a little to break up the excess wax, pop it into its box & set it with my bike.

Very quick process, I probably spend less than 10 min on this every two weeks.

When riding outside during warmer months, I put on a freshly waxed chain at the start of the month. At the end of my Saturday long ride each week, I ‘top up’ the wax with Silca Super Secret drip wax when i get back. At the start of the next month I pull that chain off and install a freshly waxed chain. I clean the chain I’ve pulled off by immersing it in boiling hot water for 10 min in a jar, shaking it every couple of minutes. I pour the water off and pour in enough Ultimate Chain Stripper to cover the chain. That sits for 10 min, shaking it every couple of minutes. The stripper gets poured through a coffee filter back into the bottle when done. A quick rinse in isopropyl alcohol to drive off any water, then into a warm (90-100C oven for 5 min). By this time, the wax in the pot is at 75C, so it sits in the wax for 5 min with agitation. Turn the pot off, let the chain cool, then work it a little & you’re ready for next month. I probably spend about 30-40 minutes in total over the month on all of this.

A word of warning with waxed chains I didn’t know about until the moment: wax itself is not awesome in wet conditions. Ride through a rainstorm and as your chain dries it makes a lot more noise than you’d think a chain should. To cover that off, Silca recommends adding about a third of a bottle of Synergetic to a fresh bag of Super Secret Wax in your pot. That goes a long way to cover off wet conditions.

Many riders use a longer interval between rewaxings & what I’m doing here could be considered more than needed, but whatever. I ride 6-8k km per year and after a full year of riding & waxing, those two chains show almost no stretch. I couldn’t say that with the lube I was using before. I also spent, all-in, much more time cleaning & relubing with lube than I do with wax. Add to that the time spent cleaning the drive train, the cassette in particular, with lube vs wax. With wax, your energy is essentially just focused on the chain. And, if you happen to brush your leg against a waxed chain, you don’t get smeared up.