Manual Beeswax Foundation Machine rollers

01 · MECHANISM

Two rollers and a frame that does not budge

The machine is two rollers mounted horizontally, close together, on a cast iron frame. The surface of the rollers carries the engraved cell pattern, and it is that relief that gets pressed into the sheet as the wax passes between them. The cast iron frame is not there for looks: its 100 kg are what stop the whole thing shifting or going out of alignment while you push, and misalignment between rollers shows up immediately as uneven embossing.

02 · THE FULL PROCESS

What has to happen before the sheet goes in

Embossing is the last step, and the quickest one. Before that you have to melt the wax and make slabs, warm them in hot water at around 40 °C — the temperature at which wax moulds without cracking — and soap both the slab and the rollers so that the sheet releases instead of sticking.

Once through the rollers, the sheet is cut to its final size. Anyone coming to this machine expecting to put a block of wax in one end and take sheets out of the other will be disappointed: what you are buying is control over the embossing and the thickness, not an automated line.

03 · THE WAX

The real advantage is knowing where it came from

Making your own foundation does not pay off only on price: it pays off because you close the loop and know what wax is going into your hives. For brood foundation you start from settled wax, free of mould, with no rancid or fermented smell and not scorched by overheating.

And there are waxes that should not go back into the brood box: wax from combs that were in direct contact with treatments, wax from colonies lost to American foulbrood, and wax from mouldy combs or combs with fermented honey. That selection beforehand counts for more in the result than any adjustment of the machine.

04 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It weighs 100 kg and bolts down to a solid bench: decide where it is going to live before it arrives, because this is not a machine you put away on a shelf.