Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => EQUIPMENT USAGE, EXPERIMENTATION, HIVE PLANS, CONSTRUCTION TIPS AND TOOLS => Topic started by: rwurster on June 19, 2013, 05:13:14 pm
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All materials are salvaged items, only had to buy 2 hinges. I made the upper portion big enough to fit 4 stacked deep frames. I used fiberboard for the bottom because it gets dark when inundated with wax and heats up quickly, the ribs trap the larger particulates that are small enough to flow with the wax and not large enough to stop on the slope of the fiber board. We've already rendered 50+ pounds of wax through this gizmo, these two frames are all that's left to melt. Slum gum just scrapes off with a bit of a pre-heat :D
(http://s12.postimg.org/6rre5hijd/DSC00550.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/6rre5hijd/)
(http://s11.postimg.org/x7qnydu73/DSC00552.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/x7qnydu73/)
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Looks great! So because of the little timber dams you don't need to filter the wax at all?
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The heavier stuff stops on the slope and the ribs catch everything, not saying they couldn't overflow with debris. It been working great thus far.
Edit: And I have extra ribs for extra filtering. A fly got into the melter yesterday and of course dive bombed right into the clean wax so that will have to be re-melted but it works really well, I'm really surprised.
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That's cool! :)
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Could you not add a final mesh trap at the bottom to catch anything that gets through the timber traps? Or would that clog up too easily? So glad I found this - I've been cleaning the wax out of the frames of about 12 supers I was given for free. Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow...
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Definitely add screen where ever you need it. I can put one at the top for rough filtering and have thought about putting a paper towel as a finishing filter at the bottom. I honestly haven't needed to filter the wax at all (knock on wood) it comes out remarkably clean. I remember seeing this design somewhere and built it from memory, added my own touches to it and it worked for me. Lots of small particulate can clog the ribs quickly but I have extra ribs for that, but I can only add 2 more ribs. Definitely make it better, I see some potential shortcomings :)
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Is there a picture here that I am not seeing?
Alfred
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Ok so the "tray" (bottom) I used to set the wax on to melt was MDF which I thought at the time might be a bad choice and it turns out it was a bad choice. So I have brought the melter back to the shop and am re-working the bottom. The wax actually started wicking through the MDF and making stalagmites and stalactites of wax under the melter. It also appears that given enough time and in a very hot environment beeswax will wick through just about any wood so I'm contemplating affixing a painted piece of tin on top of the new plywood bottom to help prevent this. Other than that, the 20" wide inner dimension worked great for melting comb out of deep/medium frames (It's wide enough to fit a deep frame and tall enough to hold 4 stacked on top of each other) and I generally had no problems other than a way to control large amounts of slum when melting old comb from cut-outs. I have a few ideas on how to control the slum and get all the minor problems I had with it fixed. I am also going to add a second piece of glass over the existing one to help crank internal temps up, mostly because I have a few extra pieces of glass :D
I don't remember where I saw this design but I mimicked it and made it to the dimensions that best suited me and it has worked very well at rendering clean wax all summer long through rain, hail, and I brought it in when I had to sweep snow off of it. I'll post pics when I'm done.
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Photos, please. thank you.
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Try sending rwuster a PM. He is still active and may bee able to re post them.
Jim