My first season with chain wax

I have read a lot about waxing chains and decided to give it a try this season on my fixed-gear road bike. The most common reason people don't use chain wax is that it is too much work. I suspect that complaint comes from people who don't care if they have a dirty chain. I like to keep my drivetrain clean, and that's also a lot of work. Over the course of one season, it's definitely more work to keep a chain clean and lubed with oil than to clean and wax a new chain. 

I started this experiment with one bike and like it enough that I am planning to switch to wax on my other bikes as the chains wear out and need to be replaced.

Here's what you need to keep your chain clean and lubed if you go the oil route:

Here's what you need if you want to wax your chain:

Startup costs are pretty high to make the transition to wax. I can see why people are a little intimidated. That's a lot of crap to wax a chain.

From left to right:

• 100g digital scale  (only necessary if you use the teflon & moly)
• Paraffin wax
• Teflon (not necessary)
• Molybdenum disulfide (not necessary)
• Crock pot
• Milk frother  (only necessary if you use the teflon & moly)
• Thermometer (not necessary if you have a crock pot)
• Mineral spirits
• Denatured alcohol

 It's a bit of a pain to source everything, but once you have all the stuff it's really not all that hard.

Molten Wax has great instructions for cleaning a new chain, and bikeradar published the UltraFast Chain Lube recipe, which is 1lb of household paraffin wax, 5g of pure PTFE (Teflon) powder, and 1g of pure molybdenum disulfide (MoS2).

If you don't mind fiddling around with stuff and like a clean drivetrain, give wax a try. If you can't be bothered, stick with whatever lube works for you.