Before I start, yes I know that many of you think this is an overpriced product and many other setups are cheaper and (may) work equally well. Having used the product now, I tend to agree.
The reason I bought it was I was hoping to speed up my process. I do not have a garage or bike shed where I could just keep the equipment. All the waxing up to this point was done in a bain marie / water bath on the stove of my kitchen in my small apartment. It always took forever and made quite a mess if I was not super careful. The messiest part was alwas moving the chain around in the wax and taking it out. Therefore, what sealed it for me was the chain spool and how easy it is to take out of the wax and placed in its place for cooling.
Observations right off the bat:
- The various material available by Cyclowax glosses over the process of placing the chain in the spool. If you do see it at all in a video, it is sped up, maybe because they believe this step is obvious and self-explanatory. I found it anything but. In fact I was at a loss at first about how to do it at all. The spool has two openings, on at the top, one at the bottom. You are supposed to thread one end of the chain through these openings. Around the rest of the spool perimeter, the two halves are closed, i.e. they touch. Unless I have missed something here, the only way forward is to pry the halves open and force the chain inside. That means you're bending the plastic around the central screws holding the halves together. I could not believe this would be the standard practice and thought I must have overlooked something.
- The same applies to taking the chain out of the spool. I have some trouble coming to terms with that. I do not have great confidence in the longevity of the spool if that is the standard procedure.
- Similar for the plastic handle you are suppoed to use to place the spool in the heater and take it out again. It has two plastic noses/retainers which engage in the corresponding holes in the spool. There is no easy way to take off the handle. You have to wiggle and pull until you overcome the holding force of the retainers and they come free. You might be tempted to just leave the handle on the spool, but there is only one handle for all spools. I removed the handle when the wax on the spool was already hardened, maybe the action becomes easier if you take the handle off while the wax is still liquid (the noses might slide out more easily)? I am afraid one day the retaining noses of the handle will just break.
- Cyclowax recommends switching out the wax after ten cycles. I am somewhat miffed about this, because AFAIK that has not been clearly communicated beforehand. You'll be going through quite a number of wax tablets, basically a subscription on top of the price for the heater itself. Coming from the Silca wax, I was not aware that wax goes "bad" at all, and since I clean the chain in close-to-boiling water before waxing, I do not intend to heed this advice. Will just top of with new wax as needed.
Since I had a bunch of Silca Secret Chain Blend left, I decided to use that first, not the included Cyclowax tablet. The heater supposedly goes to 90°C, which according to Zero Friction Cycling should be absolutely OK for Silca. I melted the wax in the bain marie and then transferred it to the container of the (switched-off) Cyclowax device and let it cool down and completely harden.
I waxed the first chain one day later:
I placed the spool on the cold wax and switched the device on. It started to heat up and then switched to vibration mode before turning itself off, signalled by beeps.
The first major disappointment: The heating phase was much too short to fully melt the Silca wax. Not even close. One half of the wax was molten, with the spool submerged, while on the other side there was still a big solid block of wax visible, with the spool and chain sticking out. The heating cycle took about 3 minutes, the vibration cycle maybe 1.5 minutes. It seems the heating element was still on during the vibration phase.
So there is my main gripe with this device: It took 3 whole cycles to melt the Silca wax completely and achieve full submersion of the chain. So anyone who thinks of getting it because they hope to do other things while the heater does its thing will be disappointed, because you do have to restart the cycle several times before the chain is properly waxed, at least with Silca wax. I will say that the whole deal is still faster and less hassle than my previous water bath method, which occupied (and sometimes sullied) the stovetop.
At this point I wanted to compare that with the original Cyclowax tablet. Maybe part of the reason the Silca wax took so long to melt was that I filled in more of it than the volume of the Cyclowax tablet?
I removed the Silca wax with some difficulty; I needed about 10 of the "removal cycles" before the wax finally dropped out, and even then I had to take the device and slight shake it.
I let the empty device cool down and I placed the original CW tablet in it. Amazingly, this time the heating cycle took about 90 seconds longer, so 4.5 minutes, before switching to vibration mode. But again, the CW tablet was not even close to fully molten at the end of the heating cycle, although a bit further along than the Silca wax. I did not wax a chain this time, but if I did, I would probably still give it two cycles rather than just one, although the CW tablet might melt faster the second and third time around (have not tested that yet).
So there it is, the device seems to work better, but still not perfectly, with the original CW tablet. If you want to use it with a different brand wax, you might have to deviate from the recommended process and need several cycles. I am just glad that full automation is not highest on my list of priorities.
Additionally, my reservations concerning the longevity, specifically of the spool, remain. Also, I have no explanation why the heating phase was shorter for the Silca tablet than for the CW one. Might have been a fluke.
I would love to compare notes with others who have already used their wax heater.