I wish I'd known about McMaster-Carr before I started. I would have bought one-pound bags of wax beads from them instead of paying $4 for 0.7 oz of beeswax and $6 for a pound of paraffin from the ma-and-pa hardware store. Yes, I'm rounding up to the nearest dollar but over $80 a pound for beeswax? That's madness!
I used about half of the paraffin because I didn't have enough beeswax. As it was, I ended up with about 10% beeswax. It's pretty hard and I'm definitely going to re-pot these ASAP.
I did luck out on the double boiler. I found a stainless liner for $1. It fits an aluminum pan that I have perfectly. I don't use the aluminum pan, so I now have a permanent wax 'boiler' setup.
I heated the double boiler on my kitchen stove (gas) with no problems. I started out on medium heat and used the lowest heat setting once the wax started melting. I used a dial thermometer that ranged up to 400F to monitor the temperature. I'll be looking for a good 'chemistry lab' hotplate before I try this again because keeping the heat under 160F was difficult.
Maybe adding more wax (and using low heat throughout the process) will help that. I didn't have time to wait around for the wax to heat up on 'low'.
I also didn't have enough wax to keep the pickups both fully submerged and off the bottom of the liner. I'll be buying more wax - in bulk - so that won't be a problem next time. I think I'll also try the 'layer of marbles' method of elevating/insulating the pickups.
This time, things were too hot and a lot of the wax seemed to drain out onto the platter I cooled the pickups on. I didn't use paper towel because it seemed stupid to have a 'wick' soaking up all of my expensive wax. Not only that; it seemed like a fire hazard.
Even my half-ass wax potting had a dramatic effect on the microphonic quality of the previously unpotted pickups. They're nearly silent now and I haven't been able to them feed back.
When I have more wax (and a weekend to sit down and do this 'right') I'll make a full report (with pictures).
