I had a bad winter, some years back, had 45 out of 50 hives die on me. Spent a LOT of time the following summer processing the bunged up equipment through a solar melter (commercial fridge door that I picked up at the dump), and processed and sold a lot of wax. I could put 30-40 frames at a time of deep super sized frames, into the melter, and the melted wax a honey dripped into a bathtub half full of water. The wax floated and the honey was dissolved (and fermented!)
I used a 5 gallon metal bucket with a 110v hot water heater element in the side of it to boil up any batches of cappings or to re-process wax that was too dirty to use the first time through. I would bring the bucket (with it half filled with water) to a boil, then cover it and allow it to sit overnight. The layer of clean wax usually had a layer of the floaties stuck to it's underside, that I would shave off with a sharp blade, and save to add to the next batch, along with all the particles of wax that had not incorporated with the cake. I used a double boiler to deal with the 'clean' wax to make the nice bricks in the tin foil packs.
I found about the easiest container to use, was a foil Chinese food take out style tray. I could set up the scale pour until the weight was reached, and move it to the next one. Not so small a qty. as to make handling a PITA, not so big as to make it cost prohibitive. IIRC the square serving size packs gave a 1 pound brick.
Cappings and other nice clean wax sold best to crafts people, and for more money. Guys that wanted it for more industrial uses typically didn't mind a little darker wax. It was all pretty nice stuff.
IIRC, the bee supplies places sell molds too, for small bricks of wax (couple ounces?). Check around online.
Cheers
Trev
