Build Your Own Solar Beeswax Melting Box

A couple years ago, I decided that honey wasn't the only thing of value I could enjoy because of my beekeeping hobby. Since I enjoy having candles around the house, it seemed logical to use the old combs as a source for beeswax and then make my own candles. This is a great craft and the results make great gifts at Christmas, if you've got a bit of an artistic flare.

In order to get the beeswax, I first tried putting the combs in a pan and melting it on the stove. Bad mistake! Since beeswax melts as 145 degrees F, the stove got too hot to give me a good quality candle wax. As a result, I got a darkened color wax that wasn't appropriate for what I had in mind. Then there was the problem of smell. Melting beeswax has an odor, and when it's burned, melted beeswax, that odor isn't the most pleasant thing in the world. Obviously, I needed another way to melt the combs.

I checked some of the major supply houses and found that there were commercial wax melters available, but they were too big for my limited needs and too expensive for my pocketbook. But looking at the pictures in the catalogues gave me an idea. Essentially, the wax melter is nothing but a box with a tray in the bottom to put the wax and something for the wax to drip into when melted. Seemed like a simple design to me, so why not build my own?

Some of the commercial melters have low temperature heating elements built in, but this would have added to the cost to put one of these in my homemade version, so I took a hint from those hot summer days when the windows are rolled up in the car. Why not let nature heat the wax for me? Solar power, that was the answer.

For a box, I used an old super. Since black color holds the heat, I spray painted the box, both inside and out, with black spray paint. Once that was done, I was ready to begin the actual mechanism of the melter. Again, simple household items worked well and kept the cost down.

I needed a tray for the wax to rest in, so I looked around and found an old paint roller tray that fit reasonably well inside the box. In the deep end, I punched two rows of five holes each across the tray. This would allow the melted wax to drip into a pan below the tray. Logic told me that I needed something non-stick for the pan, so Teflon coated metal baking dish worked like a charm. Just make sure that the pan is bigger than the paint tray.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic