Silca CEO shares his secrets on the best ways to wax your chain

Josh Poetner is the CEO of Silca, a brand that specialises in premium cycling products, from 3D-printed computer mounts to bike cleaning products. What Silca is best known for, however, is its commitment to waxed chain treatments. With decades of experience at the cutting edge of cycling technology Poertner is just the person to share his insights into the future of cycling and racing.

In this exclusive interview, Poertner talks to GCN about the secret to waxing your chain, the future of bike design and offers a glimpse into the world of WorldTour marginal gains. 

GCN: The cycling industry seems more turbulent than ever right now. How has business been for Silca?

Josh Poertner: It seems like everyone I talk to has had a hard year. You look at the publicly traded companies that are all recording less than stellar performance. At Silca we are pretty diverse in our product line, so although we are not up everywhere, we are doing strongly across the categories we are in. 3D printing continues to grow and be strong. We are the largest 3D printing company in the cycling industry that we know of, and our continued expansion into lubricants and cleaners has been well received.

GCN: How do you see the bike industry looking over the next 12 months?

JP: We are certainly in the middle of a cull. I often think of the Warren Buffett line: ‘When the tide goes out you can see who was swimming naked’ and we are definitely in a moment where you can see this. I think some of these companies are not going to be here in 12 months and others are going to be significantly restructured into better and hopefully more resilient versions of themselves.

I think the clothing guys in particular were up against it. You are ordering fabric 18 months out and you are trying to get committed orders nine months out. The supply chains are just so long that you couldn’t see it coming.

Ultimately I think the industry is going to end up in a stronger and better spot than it was. I think some of the players who need to go will go but I think that’s going to allow more business for the ones that are left. I think it’s the same online.

• Read more: Wiggle CRC to cease international sales as administrators' hunt for buyer 'gathers pace'

I think the Wiggle business model was built on always being on sale or always being discounted. Having a questionable supply chain and things coming without packaging or OEM [original equipment of manufacture] packaging, it was a challenging business model for the rest of the industry. Hopefully, if they restructure and come out of that they’ll do it differently.

GCN: When you created your first chain wax in 2007, did you know how much of a performance benefit it would offer?

JP: I learned hot waxing from a coach when I was a junior. At the time there was a product on the market that came in a tin and I think it was just paraffin with PTFE [polytetrafluoroethylene, the key component of Teflon]. I remember that you would put that stuff on your chain and in the middle of a training ride it would start to make noise. I remember thinking then that this cannot be that good, it’s squeaking two hours into a ride.

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Chain wax has come a long way since 2007 with molybdenum disulphide now used on a microscopic level

The tech we ended up with actually came from a guy I had worked with and was friends with who was working at the time in Formula 1 engine development. He sent me a paper out of France and told me I had to read it. If we could recreate this we would be on to something. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that more than 10 people would be interested in drivetrain efficiency enough to be hot waxing our chains!

GCN: We are constantly asked about waxed chains in the comments below our videos. One of the most frequent questions is how suitable a waxed chain is for a wet British winter. Can you shed some light on this?

JP: For ballparks, we tend to say you can expect a wax treatment to last between 300 and 350 kilometers for dry and dusty conditions. That is probably more like 150-200 kilometres for wet and dirty conditions. If you can catch it and get it re-waxed or cleaned and topped off with a good drip wax within the interval, the performance is going to be way better and it’s going to last longer than using an oil lube.

The thing with the other lubes is that because they have that viscous damping in and on the chain, they will run much quieter for longer but what they are really doing is masking the breakdown of the lube.

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Waxed chains are one of the mostly hotly talked about things in cycling right now

If you can, convince yourself that your chain starting to make a noise is a nice thing because it reminds you that you need to wax it. It's like an early warning alarm.

If you put that in the context of the new SRAM Eagle T-Type with a $200 chain and $600 cassette it adds up. In the past, we have said using our stuff saves two chains and no one really cared but all of a sudden if you are on that stuff you care, that’s real money.

GCN: What is the best way to rewax a chain?

JP: If you are using hot wax the best way to go about it is to remove the chain and throw it in boiling water. All the wax will come out and it will actually take all the grit and grime with it and it floats to the top. You can drop a paper towel in there and all of it sticks to the paper towel and you pull it away and you are done.

If you are drip waxing or doing it on the bike, I would just give it a good hose through the rollers and use a good drivetrain cleaner or mild degreaser. The wax is really impervious to most solvents and chemicals that are in most of those cleaners. You can have a waxed chain and you can cover it in dirt and then throw it in a container with that and you give it a shake and all the dirt comes off and gets encapsulated.

GCN: Is the future of bike design going to be 3D-printed titanium lugs with carbon fibre tubing?

JP: I think it is [the best solution] right now. The reason I wanted to be in 3D printing now is that it is evolving so quickly. You think the first 3D printers came to market in 2013 so 10 years ago. You look at how far it has come, so what will it be in 10 years? We are already seeing carbon 3D printing is coming.

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3D-printed titanium is were we currently are when it comes to printed bike designs however Poertner doesn't think it will always be this way

The titanium-carbon construction we have now is fantastic and you really do get that undamped stiffness of the titanium at the nodes. As well as the slightly improved damping and controllable stiffness that you can design into the carbon. Long term, it's probable that we get some sort of fully printed monocoque metal bikes or carbon further in the future. I think the driver for that ultimately is going to be labour because the way we do it now, the 3D printing itself isn't expensive but everything thereafter is.

• Read more: Why are titanium bikes so desirable?

GCN: Do you think 1x could fully roll into the road market?

JP: They [SRAM] have certainly done a brilliant job selling it. They have got good people in there, and it is very well done. It is a product that could change the industry or disappear quickly. SRAM have put themselves, from their business decisions, in a spot where they really could change the market.

• Read more: Everything you need to know about 1x, 2x and 3x groupsets

I think the big thing comes down to how important that little bit of efficiency is to people, ultimately. I honestly think it is more of a market acceptance and marketing problem than a technical one because does it really matter if you are losing five watts on a climb?

GCN: Should we be caring about aerodynamics as much as we do?

JP: I think it depends on, one, what you are doing with it and, two, the story that you are telling yourself if we are really honest. I’ve got a friend who is a legit contender at the Masters World Championships. He can sit there and say ‘that guy beat me by five seconds here and 11 seconds there’. It's marginal gains and those are the only gains left to explore. I think for someone like him the technically correct answer is the full aero bike is still the right choice.

We work with quite a lot of WorldTour teams and you know for these guys it is real money! It is the career, the contract. There are so many layers to it and it can be so important but for the rest of us, it isn’t.

• Read more: Past, present and future of road bike tech: Aerodynamics with Cervélo co-founder Gerard Vroomen

I think for the rest of us, it is more about what story are you telling yourself. I am always amazed at the big oversized ceramic pulley wheels. Everybody’s got them, you show up on a group ride and 70% of the people there have them and everybody I know who has got one has never raced.

GCN: Pro cycling is definitely in a state of a technological arms race. How did it start and where do you think it is going?

JP: I always trace the start [of measuring technological gains] back to the pro team CSC, Andy Ording and I met the guys from Cervélo when they were in one of the worst hotels in Las Vegas. So we go to meet them and head to their room. It’s an old motel with all the doors facing outside. As we get near there is this strong smell of solvents and they are painting the bikes in front of the motel and then hanging them to dry in the shower.

This opportunity came up at CSC and nobody wanted any part of it so we put this rag-tag group together. CSC team boss Bjarne Riis was one of the only team directors at the time who had ever raced or used power. So the way that went down was that we would take stuff there and do testing with the SRM and he would get the idea behind using the product.

© Velo Collection (TDW) / Getty Images

CSC were the first team to really benefit from looking in to the science of bike technology

You look at what happened with that team. They were back of the pack and one of the lowest-budget teams. I think they were either last or second to last the first handful of years we were with them but they quickly moved up the ranks. When you look at it, we took this group of riders on this super aero equipment in an age when no one was on aero equipment. All of a sudden the average placing of the average rider at CSC went up eight or nine positions per event.

• Read more: Can GCN beat Ineos Grenadiers with the help of marginal gains?

In those early years, they weren’t marginal gains at all, they were big-ass gains, and then over time the gains became more and more difficult. If you look now at the top teams they have technical directors and they have engineers on staff making technical decisions and they have budgets to do testing and they are doing it and it really shows.

On the aggregate, those teams cannot lose in the big picture. On any given day anybody can still win. We still have that beauty of the sport. However, on aggregate you can’t beat this macroscopic approach and I think it is only going to continue to go that way. As the gains get smaller and harder to find it becomes more expensive and time-consuming.

GCN: Do you think we will see the 6.8kg minimum weight limit being scrapped anytime soon?

JP: There are still a few teams that struggle to hit it, and they are not all low-budget teams so that to me is an interesting thing. I certainly think that the manufacturers are mixed, in that they will all publicly say they want it to be scrapped, but I think behind the scenes that is not necessarily the case.

I was the technical lead for the WFSGI [World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry] for a couple of years, which is the industry's organisation that argues with the UCI and at least we are past the place when the UCI was really in their mind thinking the bikes were safe because of the limit.

I think it would be fun to see it lowered slightly just to see the things people do but I think it is probably unlikely as it would widen the gap between some teams.

We have more content with Josh Poertner on the GCN Tech YouTube channel where he sits in on the Tech Show. He has also done a video with us explaining all the different types of chain lube. If you haven't seen these yet make sure to check them out.

Silca

Silca is a bicycle accessories manufacturer currently based in Indianapolis, USA. It produces a range of maintenance products, tools and accessories to elevate cyclists’ ride experience.