Waxy progression

Okay! We left off with a pot full of sludge and me full of skepticism. I somehow imagined that the wax would solidify in a tidy ball suspended in the water. I was wrong, but it DID come together:

I took this picture after I'd dislodged the disk and drained the honey-infused water underneath, but you get the idea. It was about an inch thick or so; its bottom was covered with hardened ... stuff. I scraped it off as best I could:

Then I hacked the disk of wax into bits, which took some serious brute strength:

I put the bits in some cans and set the cans in a pot partially full of water.

I also put some water in the cans to help encourage the wax to melt. I'm not sure that was strictly necessary, but it worked!

I added the contents of the smaller can to one of the bigger ones, just for the sake of tidiness.

So now what? The bottom of each can will have an inch of water or so. Then there will be some miscellaneous crap adhering to the bottom of the wax, and then a column of wax. It could probably stand yet another round of filtering before it gets used, but we'll see. I feel like it's definitely come a long way in a couple of days.

I've also done a lot of cooking in the two evenings in the kitchen: mesquite chocolate chip cookies, curried pumpkin coconut soup, muhammara, and a ravioli-broccoli-tomato-cheese bake (because I needed the can the tomatoes were occupying!). I'm a little sick of kitchen projects for the moment, but look for more wax updates in a week or so.