Rabu, 13 Agustus 2008

Rendering Beeswax


An incredibly generous friend gifted me with a 55 gallon drum of un-rendered beeswax.

Another generous friend made me a solar still to turn this gloppy mess into pure beeswax for candles and salve making.






If you've never seen un-rendered beeswax, you'll immediately notice it's resemblance to alien intestines.





This picture doesn't quite portray the sticky, gloppy mess that this stuff is, nor can it demonstrate the beautiful beeswaxy smell that surprisingly emanates from it. My friend assures me that with the sun's help this will turn into beautiful beeswax.

Here's the solar still:


How it works, is you place the beeswax mix into the upper portion, close the window top and let the sun melt the mixture. It's melt at different times and the beeswax drips into a container down below. We've only just put the beeswax in, so I'll keep updating on it's progress.

Thanks to Dave and Gabe for making this project possible!