Chain Waxing

I’ll dive into his articles. But I’m already realising that obviously nothing is ever going to truly compare to a hot wax.
I’ve been cleaning my chains with a combination of putting them in an ikea sandwich bag with white spirits and hot soapy water in the kitchen sink. Seeing a chain in the sink delights my wife.
I’ve got a slow cooker that hasn’t been used for years, so it might as well be used for something.

Seeing a chain in the sink delights my wife.

I keep an old washing up bowl and dish brush in the shed. white spirit, thorough scrub, then dry with a clean rag.

in the shed

aka "in the kitchen" for anyone still living in London's Famous Shithole

recent convert, waxing is loads better than oil

Added molybdenum to a diy wax mixture, bit disappointed the chain doesn’t gleam anymore.

Tried the Loctite degreaser on a new chain and it did fuck all.

I'm going back to horrible petrochemicals. What's the best shit I'm likely to find in a hardware store here?

Commercial citrus floor cleaner works a trick but attacks steel, possibly not enough for concern.

I have white spirit or pure turpentine. Which of the two would be better at stripping factory lube?

I do exactly the same. Seems okay, I usually only remember to top about three mins into the ride, though ...

Toolstation sell degreaser for not too much, if that's close enough? https://www.toolstation.com/home-strip-s­uper-strength-degreaser/p28838

I’d go with turps.

When I was a boy, white spirit was called "Turpentine substitute", although they are now technically different; white spirit is a turpentine substitute, but not all turpentine substitutes are white spirit.
White spirit is more volatile, so it should leave less residue to interfere with the bonding of your wax to the steel.

We did pretty well during ALPI. Think I only missed one night of reapplication.

Yeah, if you google it, white spirit is mineral turps and turpentine is white fuck arragh whatever.

I used one of them and it kinda went cloudy white - like it's separating into layers. I wonder if that's something to do with the jar I used. Water maybe got it? Or does white spirit/turps do that? I've used one of them before and it separated into a clear layer and a cloudy white layer. Very annoying.

White spirit is a fairly narrow cut product from refining crude oil. It is mainly straight and branched chain saturated alkanes.'Odourless' versions have very low levels of (smelly) aromatics. White spirit has limited solvency.
Turpentine was distilled from (pine) tree roots, and had a distinctive smell, from its constituent terpenes. It had greater solvency than White Spirit.