Simple question

[London Customs]

Guys, simple question.

When heating wax in a frying pan, can you heat the paraffin and beeswax straight into the pan, or should you heat oil/water and put a bowl with the paraffin/beeswax in the water/oil??

Can the paraffin/beeswax take the direct heating?

Sorry if it's a dumb question. I'd rather ask that, instead of burning down my house!!

[Magnut]

Never heat wax directly!

Use a double boiler. Pan floating in a pot of water or something. You only need to heat it to about 135 degrees. The double boiler will also give nice even heat.

Please do not burn your house down.

[London Customs]

Thought so, thanks man!!

I won't burn my house down. My girlfriend's got a mean right uppercut, and she wil be pissed off if i do!!

[kevinT]

If you're going to heat wax on the stove, the process mentioned will work best. However, wax can be heated directly depending on what type of appliance that you're using.

You can use deep fryers, wax baths that are used in spas, electric frying pans, and heat wax directly. The key thing is to monitor the temperature of the wax. Do a search on potting. I know some wax baths were recently posted and where to get them.

Also keep in mind that different waxes have different melting temps.

I use a food thermometer to keep track of temps with an alarm that will sound if it goes above the temp that you set.

[Possum]

...

I use a temp controlled skillet as mentioned a million times now. These are nice because they go from very low temps to frying temp. So if you're in a big hurry you can heat up a whole pan of wax in about five minutes, you don't want to go off and leave it on high temp of course. I like having control over what temp the wax is at for various reasons. I use a meat thermometer, very cheap. If you are the forgetful type, maybe one of the beauty supply wax melters thingys would be safer. Leo Fender used what I'm using at G&L when he was there, thats where I got the idea, plus they are plentiful and cheap at Goodwill, Salvation Army etc.

[tonedeciple]

I use a small crock pot. It takes about an hour to melt the wax, but the temp never gets over 150° fahrenheit. I'm using a candy thermometer to monitor the temp. I may switch to a larger crock pot so I can do more than two pups at a time.

[Magnut]

My girlfriend's got a mean right uppercut

Ha! I hope you didn't find that out the hard way.

When you talked about doing it on the stove I got this mental picture of what I saw someone do and that was heat wax on a gas stove. The pan of wax caught on fire and fortunately cool heads prevailed and the lid was handy.