JonB
Halcyon member
It's funny you mention that. Last week, I was talking with my bee keeper buddy about beeswax candles.Sounds like a plan. If you're feeling froggy, put about 10% candle paraffin in there
Let's back this up a bit.
I have beeswax from 3 different sources. A 20+lb box of fresh stuff from Randyrat(fresh as in about 5 yrs old). Another box from a seller on CB, that sold some cheap(as it was real old), from his father or other relative? that had been harvested/processed/cleaned decades ago and then stored in a barn since the 1960s. And then I got another small box(maybe 4 lbs) of beeswax candles(that I assumed was pure beeswax) that I bought at a local garage sale(for $3), a widow selling off all her husbands stuff, which turned out to be a friendly Competitor of my Bee keeper buddy.
The last batch of SL68B was made with one of those candles...because the other to large boxes were stored in a hard to access shelf in my garage.
So, last week my Bee keeper buddy and I are talking beeswax. He want's my help in building a solar beeswax melter/cleaner/strainer. Not that I am any craftsman or any thing, but he is less than a craftsman than I am, LOL. Candle making/selling came up in the conversation, as he wants to do that sooner than later he tells me, to get ready for the farmers markets. I mention to him about my box of candles and I bring up my lube making project, that will happen soon ...and he says, you know those aren't pure beeswax don't you? He said he always adds about 10% paraffin to his beeswax for making candles and he learned that from his Competitor way back when he started out keeping bees, in the early 1990s.
So there WAS a small percentage of paraffin (about 2.5% of total wax) in my last batch of SL68B, LOL.
I was gonna mention that in my post earlier today, but figured it didn't really matter, and I wasn't 100% sure, but if you ask my Buddy, he'd say he would be 100% sure, LOL.