Silca presents a pot for "cooking" and waxing your chain at the perfect temperature

Waxing is the latest trend when it comes to lubricating the chain, ensuring that it stays clean for much longer while reducing friction to a minimum and extending the life of the chain. However, this process can be complex to perform correctly. To avoid this, Silca has launched a chain waxing kit that allows you to add one of the most often overlooked marginal gains.

More durability and watt savings with Silca's chain waxing kit

Waxing the chain is the latest in chain lubrication not only with the aim of making our bike run quietly and the gears shift correctly, but also seeking a quantifiable performance gain. In fact, Silca claims that their chain wax formulation can provide savings of up to 8 watts.

A technique that dates back a few years when Ceramic Speed launched their UFO chains treated with wax to minimize friction at a price in line with that brand's products and with a lifespan of just 600 km before becoming a conventional chain. This coincided with the popularization of wax-based lubricants that outperformed traditional oil by promising a longer chain life by preventing dirt from accumulating in the drivetrain.

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However, wax-based lubricants tend to perform worse than oil in the lubrication task itself. This is because, due to their nature, they have a harder time penetrating the inside of the chain pins, limiting their action to a superficial layer that is expelled from the chain with use, so we have to apply them practically every time we ride, especially if we have ridden in rainy or muddy conditions.

Soon, some enthusiasts began to apply what is known as waxing, which is nothing more than, starting from a perfectly degreased chain, giving it a hot wax bath so that it can effectively reach the inside of the links. This extends the duration of the lubrication while making it more effective. All while keeping the wax clean, resulting in a longer chain life by preventing dirt from sticking and acting like sandpaper on the drivetrain components.

To facilitate the chain waxing process, various brands have been launching both specific waxes for this purpose and different tools to make everything easier. A good example is the waxing kit that Silca has included in its catalog, which includes a small pot in which to melt the wax.

Many of you may think that this process can be done perfectly in a saucepan at home, and you would be right, however, for the wax to adhere perfectly to the chain and the waxing treatment to be as efficient as possible, the wax must be melted at a precise temperature range. This is what this Silca pot provides, allowing total control of the wax temperature and application times, as well as having a useful support on which to place the chain once waxed to drain and cool.

In addition to this pot for waxing the chain, Silca has its secret waxing recipe, a mixture of wax and other products with which the brand ensures that the chain's life can be extended up to 25,000 kilometers and achieve a reduction in friction that translates into a gain of up to 8 W.
Among Silca's waxing products, the so-called ChainStrips also stand out, squares that look like a chocolate bar and whose mission is to avoid the most laborious process when we want to use wax on a new chain: removing all the factory lubricant.

Simply add a ChainStrip to the melted wax when waxing the chain for the first time. The ChainStrips produce a process in the oils known as oleogelation, similar to the hydrogenation of fats in the food industry, where the ChainStrips manage to agglomerate the lubricant molecules and turn them into solids. In this way, the oils are converted into waxes that are compatible with the wax added in the waxing process.

In this way, Silca aims to make a chain waxing procedure that, while very efficient, is also too laborious for most users, more accessible to everyone. If you want to purchase these products, they are available on the Silca website, with a price of 119 € for the pot, 48 € for the lubricating wax presented in a 500 g package, and 29 € for the StripChips, with 6 squares for as many new chains.