None of Your Bees Wax, Part II

Continuing with yesterdays topic, when I have a bucket of miscellaneous bits of wax I place them in a solar wax melter I built. It is a box with a small double pane window. On the top section I have a 9-inch square baking pan with a hole to train the melted wax on one side. The melted wax drips out of that pan into a bread pan. I place the solar wax melter at an angle to collect the maximum amount of the suns rays. After one batch melts I'll add more wax through out the day.



After the sun goes down the wax solidifies into an ingot that I remove from the pan. This wax is pretty pure, but it still has some impurities in it that need to be further refined by placing the ingots in a pair of nylons and reheating in a double boiler. Once refined again I pour the wax into forms that produce one-ounce ingots. This measured amount makes it easy to add the proper amount of wax into formulas that I use to make creams and balms.

Many people produce candles and I'm sure I have enough wax on hand to produce at least a hundred of them, but I use my wax sparingly because it is a rather precious commodity.