I made an interesting discovery about the colour of the wax. Most of the wax I have taken from the solar melter is from black comb and is darker than I consider attractive for decorative things like candles.
I have refined it by melting in a pot over water and the dirty stuff goes to the bottom and can be scraped off. However the wax itself has still remained dark.
Last night though I made a discovery, through what was nearly a disaster but I was saved by our smoke detector
.
I had some wax that was melted down several times till it no longer had any "dirt" on the bottom of it. But it was still unpleasantly dark. So last night I melted it down in a pot with some water so it could be poured into molds. But left the element on high, then got distracted by a phone call.
Next thing there is 2 smoke alarms going off, I charge into the kitchen and find the pot boiling, with steam impregnated wax foaming right up to the top of the pot, overflowing onto the element and smoke everywhere 😵.
Just Thank God it did not burst into flames!!
Anyhow took it off the heat, and it settled down. This morning I tipped the now hard plug of wax out, there was fine dirt type stuff under the plug which scraped off easy, and the wax itself is now a lovely yellow.
I can only assume the water thoroughly mixing and foaming with the wax has caught a lot of the micro particles of dark matter, and taken them out of the wax and settled on the bottom. This was material that would not come out just by melting the wax.
However although the wax now looks good, I did read an article by NZBeeswax once that wax should not be melted with water, because it hydrogenates it. So if that's the case my wax will be hydrogenated. But, it does look good.
However I do not want to repeat this rather dangerous procedure, I would love to know how people like NZBeeswax get their wax lovely and clean and yellow.
