[OhLaLa]

I need to make a new one, thought I'd share this design plan with you:

http://www.beesource.com/build-it-yourself/solar-wax-melter/

Invaluable piece of kit, costs practically nothing to make.

 

[TenTors]

Many thanks for the design. I have bookmarked the weblink and also forwarded on to one of my beekeeper friends.

I also made my own solar wax extractor - (they can cost £100s to buy). I used a sheet of toughened glass from an old rotted out back door - about 23 inches x 34 inches but not critical. I fitted the glass into a home made wooden frame, and then I made a wooden shallow box - about 7 inches deep - with planks as the sides of the box and a plywood bottom - I used 9 mm thick ply - not the very thin stuff - gives a bit better insulation. The ouside dimensions of the box are the same as the frame with the glass sheet in it.  So I have a 7 inch deep wooden box about 3ft X 2ft - with a sheet of glass in a frame which fits snugly on top. I used thin planed timber strips about 3 inch X 1/4 inch fixed around the outside of the box to locate the frame - a couple of stout handles on the frame are useful but not essential for lifting it off the box.
Then the clever bit - I got an old single drainer stanless steel sink from our recyling centre and cut off the drainer with a jigsaw (hacksaw will do - but takes longer) - so I have a peice of stainless about 20 inches square. This I mounted on a square frame made out of 4 inch planks by screwing through the outer edges of the drainer. I bent the drainer down in the middle slightly to ensure that molten wax runs into the middle of the SS 'tray'. I also cheated by fitting a couple of 60w light bulbs in the drainer frame under the drainer - but this is not really necessary if you have good sun. This I have found works a treat and you can fit whole 14 inch x 12 inch deep national brood frames onto the tray two at a time (although brood frame wax is not going to win you any prizes). The kit will easily take three national shallows at a time.
Sorry this is a bit of a long message - but some of the ideas may be useful to somebody.

[Plantoid]

The stainles steel will act as a reflector so the melter will not be as effective as it might be.
 
My mentor in bee keeping and I played with the solar melter idea for many months .
We found that using rock mineral wool for insulation instead of polystyrene  inside a two inch framed melter clad in 5 mm ply internally including the bottom and some aluminium off an old dismaltled caravan on the outsides was very very effective and lasted well over eight years . it was about 2 foot 6 inches  wide by about 3 feet long internally and some 18 inches deep internally
 
The top was abig pane of 1/4 thick security glass to stop us breaking it every time with a stop to prevent it sliding off the sides or the lowest eddge
 We spray painted the inside matt black and found it got much hotter than a white painted one .
 It was set inside with simple runners to present the tray to the sun at about 20 degrees  and a big tray 4 inch deep with three 4 mm holes in the bottom in a tiny triangle about 10 mm up fron the edge of the tray . Then we put heat resisting mattt black stove paint on  , these were far more effective than shiny or light material ..
 the whole melter was sited in the open  but protected from winds by hedges of box and was sat on some thick poly sheeting so we could easily rotate the melter to align it better withe the sun as the day progresssed
 both trays had fold in handles for removal .. we had to add them later because we for got them initially and holding a heavy very hot solar heated tray is not much fun i can tell you

the melted wax being run out off the three holes had time to lose much of the crud you often get with solar heaters , underneath we had a tray almost the same size as the top melting tray but with 6 inch sides .

It was one heck of an effective melter ,for we could run ten whole commercial frames through it at a time to clean , kill wax moths eggs etc and basicaly sterilise them.

 For other things we just cut the unwired wax out and put it in by the bucket full , cappings got washed first ,the liquid went into the mead barrels and the wax into a cleand out melter to get a better clean wax which we used to make our own new unwired foundations