Ed's machine used a double boiler in the kitchen on the stove.
My version uses a pre-owned Crock Pot I got at Goodwill for $5
that I can use outside in the yard. This keeps melted wax out of
my pots and off the floor and appliances.
When I began flying fighter kites I looked up every reference I
could find that had anything to do with them. One of these was
Ed Alden's Fighter Kite Article
in the Spring 1993 Kitelines magazine.
This article also had a very good section on building a fighter line hot waxer that is very easy to build using simple materials.
There have been a few inqueries over the years on rec.kites on how to build a line waxer, and the magazine article has been out of print so long that I decided to give you some idea of what I've done and several other peoples opinion on how to it yourself if you're so minded.
Ed's machine used a double boiler in the kitchen on the stove.
My version uses a pre-owned Crock Pot I got at Goodwill for $5
that I can use outside in the yard. This keeps melted wax out of
my pots and off the floor and appliances.
I just leave the melted wax in the Crock Pot until next time I want to run up a batch of line.
Heated wax produces volitile fumes, so you should be very carefull about sparks and open flames while the wax is hot and provide generous ventilation if you do it in an enclosed area.
I prefer to use parafin candle wax I buy at the store in the canning goods aisle. It appears reddish in the photos because I dropped in the red wax rind from a Gouda cheese just to see what would happen. It gives the finished line a pinkish tinge when it's on the reel, but doesn't look too garrish while I'm flying on it.
Some people recommend bees wax, but I find it to be too sticky.
It tends to pick up dust and dirt more easily and when you have a
pile of it on the ground in front of you it will even stick to itself and
cause tangles when you let out line. It's a very personal attribute.
Some people swear by some particular formula, and others only swear
at it.
Bruce Lambert has suggested that I use a piece of vinyl tubing to
strip excess wax off the line before it gets out of the bucket by threading
it through the vinyl with a needle. The size of the needle and the
diameter of the line will determine how much wax is removed. Wax
drips directly back into the boiler without loss. I've bored a
hole in the frame to anchor a piece of vinyl tubing in and cut the end at
an angle so I don't have to go through two layers.
I've made a couple of spirals out of copper wire and pressed
one end into a hole bored into the frame. They are guides to keep
the line coming in and going out from flopping around and jumping off the
rollers. The spirals allow me to set the thread into them the
same way you do with the thread guide on a sewing machine. A screw
eye from the hardware store would work just as well, but you need to thread
the line through them rather than just twisting it in.
Once the thread is run through the stripper, wrap the line around
the rollers in a figure eight pattern three or four times. Wrapping
more times may tend to make the layers bind up against each other too much
as they creep to one side of the groove as you run it through. Where
it crosses in the middle it scrapes against the layers going past in the
other direction and tends to force out any air pockets inside the line.
A few turns around the rollers gives you eighteen to twenty four
inches of line under the wax at any given time. The rollers I
used were the hubs for some model airplane wheels that I bought at a hobby
shop. They were sold seperately and cost a lot less than the
foam rubber tires meant to go on them.
This is the back side of my frame. I built it out of
some used floor moulding I had in the shed out back and fastened together
with screws. It tapers toward the bottom and has radiused
corners to conform to the sides of the Crock Pot that I'm using.
There's a piece of carbon fiber in holes bored into either side
to keep the ends from drawing together when there is tension between
the rollers.
When the wax is hot, I press it into the Crock Pot and it wedges
quite securely across the diameter so it won't pull out while I'm pulling
line through it from some yards away. I like to let the wax cool
over eight to ten yards in the air before winding it on a reel.
If the wax is still hot it will stick to the line already on the
reel. When you fly with line like that, it will not come off the
reel cleanly the first time you go to use it and you'll have to pull the line
off the reel.
In this photo I don't have the frame immersed in the wax and fitted
tightly, but it shows the parts in relation to how they're used when it's
working. I don't have any line that I need waxed right now, so
I didn't bother heating it up. You only need enough wax to cover
the line on the rollers so it's best to keep them as close to the bottom
as you can. This system consumes very little wax so you don't
need to replenish it too frequently.
On the left I have a spool stand that I use for sewing. This feeds line off a spool on the base through a loop above the waxer frame cleanly. The line goes through the input guide, into the wax, around the rollers, through the stripper and out the output guide, cools and is then wound onto a reel.
If you align the direction you pull the line out with the top bar, the frame stays quite securely inside the Crock Pot. If you pull from some other direction, it jiggles loose and you pull the whole works out and splash wax everywhere. Be safe ;)
When I'm done with it I turn it off, pull the plug, pull the
frame out of the wax and let it drain back into the bottom of the pot for
ten minutes or so while I go have a beer or something. The heat
from the cooling wax in the bottom keeps the wax on the frame suspended
just over it to drip off and keep things clean. Then I put the
top of the Crock Pot back over it to keep the wax from collecting dust
when I put it back in the cupboard after the whole thing has cooled off.
Each flyer has his own preference for the amount of wax he likes or doesn't like on his fighter kite flying line. My preference is for a very thin coating of wax, and for it to be as uniform along the length of the line as possible.
I prefer using a "Gator" reel or spool to hold my flying line. And since I have to wind my line onto it, I thought if I could combine both the waxing and the winding, I would have it made! It does work pretty well, but far from perfect.
As you can see by the photos, I have assembled a conglomeration of second hand "treasures" to semi-automate the line waxing and winding process. What you see is a "crockpot" where I melt the wax. Next to it, the motorized workings or "guts" from an electric ice cream churn that winds the line onto my Gator reel.
I position the original spool of line so it will freely unspool or unwind in the direction I want it to. The winder rotates at about 50 rpm, not fast. As it rotates, it pulls the line off of its original spool, through the melted wax, then through a "wax squeege" and onto the Gator reel.
The line is guided through the wax by a few screw "eyes" I screwed into a plywood board that is submerged into the wax. I secure the board into the crockpot with a strap. (what you see on the board in addition to the screw eyes are the remains of other unsuccessful methods I have used to guide the line through the wax)
When I begin to wax some line, I first melt the wax. Then lift out the board with the line guides and feed the line through the guides. Then I thread the line into the eye of a needle. The needle size is what determines the amount of wax that is squeezed off the line. I push the needle through a piece of vinyl tubing (this is the squeege ) and pull the line through it and tie the line onto the Gator reel that is on the winder. Start the winder rotating, and I have waxed line.
Oh ya, the kind of wax. I use paraffin because of the way it coats the line and the way it feels in my hand when flying. It is readily available at the grocery store. I have tried beeswax and candle wax also. Beeswax makes the line very sticky. Bees wax is great for using on bridles, but, for my preference, is way too sticky for flying line. Candle wax is stickier than paraffin, but lots less sticky than beeswax.
So, you ask, why go to all this bother? Darned good question and one I am not sure I can answer other than to say I am intrigued by contraptions and like flying fighter kites with "properly" waxed flying line.
One idea and experiment led to another and this contraption is what I ended up with. I am certain it is not the best way, just the way I do it.
Grins, Bruce.