No matter how easy it is to throw a piece of metal or plastic onto a tool and start making chips, the price of materials does add up. [rawkstar320] has been using machinable wax – a very hard wax that is up to the task of being cut with tools spinning at thousands of RPM – to reduce his material cost, simply remelting every part with a mistake. This wax can be made at home, it turns out, and [rawkstar] is glad to walk us through the process.

The creation of machinable wax begins by melting a few pounds of paraffin wax in a home deep fryer. Machining pure paraffin would gum up the works of just about any machine, so [rawkstar] throws a few plastic polyethylene bags into the already melted wax.

After casting and cooling, these blocks of wax are ready to be surfaced with a tool and milled into any part [rawkstar]’s workshop is capable of. As a bonus, all of the chips produced from this wax can be recycled and melted down again making for a somewhat renewable material that is perfect for prototyping or casting.