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Your bike shop may do it for free to cheap. If you match the length of your old chain, the actual cutting takes 10 seconds. Or you can buy a chain tool for cheap. I use the one on my multi tool.
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thank you guys 
Cutting a chain to the proper length is easy, provided you have a chain breaker, which can be picked up relatively cheap.
As a couple others have mentioned, you can use your old chain, so long as it doesn’t have a million miles on it, but failing that, I’ve found the following site very handy… it hasn’t failed me yet!!
Good luck whichever path you choose!
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Don’t throw away the cut off links. In the event you lose a roller while handling/waxing your chain, you’ll be able to take one from your spare links.
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going all in with the marginal gains this season - going to wax my chain. I see silca have a sale on at the moment - is their system/ pot worth the convenience over crock pot or stove pot options? fwiw it will be for shed/ garage use, so I’m not that concerned over mess.
IMHO it’s not worth it. I do several chains per session and they all fit in my medium crock pot. You can only do one in the Silca and you can’t really swisher it around without a mess. I use a temperature gun and control the temperature by offsetting the lid. There’s really nothing I like about the Silca unit. I thought I liked the wire chain holder, but now that is spinning and it’s troublesome to remove. Get Molten Speed Wax and heat it up to 200 with the chains in the pot. Not sure why Silca says 175f - I’ve heated it up to 210 easy and it’s fine. I would also start with optimised chains that are pre treated and diamond dust worn in. Have fun 
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I’m on the opposite side on this, I love the Silca. I dont wanna keep track of temperature or such, just want to set it to 75 celsius and be done.
But I agree that its not huge, so I’d love a larger version 
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I’m wanting to do this too, but the contradicting recommendations are really hanging me up. I have 6 chains to wax. So far… I figure I’ll likely at least buy a couple sets of strip chips. Following along.
With 6 chains, would it not be easier to just buy a bottle of UFO Cleaner, and then use around 150-200ml of that to strip the chains?
Must be much cheaper!
I was thinking about this just yesterday while waxing 5 chains at a time.
In one of the silca videos Josh mentioned that they bulk strip via the former methods not strip chip. 6 Chains isn’t necessarily the size of a bulk batch they are doing on prewaxed chains but would definitely have me looking into anything but the strip chip to do it. I was doing about 4 or 5 at the same time last time and didn’t bother with a strip chip.
I usually wax when I have 2 chains to do, so winter I’ll go monthish with my 2 trainer chains and do a batch. Summer I’ll swap out trainer crockett chains at the same time so one of each. Yeah I have 6 total chains between my 2 bikes and her bike but I’m almost never waiting to do them all at once.
I don’t have the silca unit but I have the similar amazon someone found. After months of using it I would say it does not have the better PID control that the silca unit does and takes a bit to warm up. Other than that, which doesn’t bother me, I’m fine with it and don’t plan to upgrade.
Silca’s directions say one block per chain so I guess one of those bars is enough for 6 chains (?)
I would do two chains and one bike at a time to get started and get the hang of it. It’s super simple but there are a few things that work different and sorting them out with less variables might be a good idea. I started with my road bike.
I wouldn’t use strip chips for multiple chains. I’m not sure that Silca recommend using more than one per bag of wax. I’m also sceptical of the whole thing - I’d rather have the crappy grease off and gone than mixed in my pot, ‘converted’ or not. You’ll have to clean the rest of the drive train anyway so you’ll need UFO Clean or spirits to do that so I’d just use the same stuff to clean the chains. Hopefully you’ll be using new chains - if not strip chip is definitely a no-no, and my personal record is 13 baths in mineral spirits before a chain was fully clean…I was definitely hoping it was more worn when I saw it, but it was pretty much brand new, just filthy!
Hmm… well I don’t need to do them all at once. $27 for UFO cleaner and $19 (currently) for the strip chips? I have his/hers mountain bikes on their way, so those will need to be done. The his/hers road bikes can be switched to wax when new chains are due, and same for the his/hers gravel bikes.
(The 2 kids bikes, 2 trainer bikes, seldom used TT bike, and commuter bikes can stay on traditional lube… (things may be getting out of hand)).
ETA: Looks like you can get a lot more total cleanings out of one bottle of Silca stripper (six for six strip chips (which can be done with one bag of wax) v. ??? from the stripper in a mason jar. I am just trying to avoid having to reapply stripper over and over and over for every chain. I have mineral spirits but that sounds truly miserable. I’d rather spend the money to make it as easy as possible.
You can get 25-50 chains per 500 mL UFO (5-10 chains per 100 mL). It’s super easy, especially compared to mineral spirits. Soak for 5 min, agitate for 1 min, remove, rinse with boiling water. I do several chains at once in a Gatorade bottle.
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I used silca chain stripper this weekend to add a new chain to my rotation. It’s awesome compared to the old way of doing it. I put the full bottle into a ball jar, added my chain, shook for 30 seconds, waited for 10 minutes, shook for 30 seconds, rinsed the chain with water, then waxed it.
I use the Silca pot and it works fine. My initial pot had LCD issues upon arrival and getting it replaced by Silca was way more effort than it should have been considering I received a defective product. Regardless, I got a replacement and it’s working well.
I agree with others that a larger pot would be helpful, but not sure it offsets (for me) having to try and control the temperature. Actually dropping the chain into the melting pot is the fastest and easiest part. The initial melting of the wax and breaking the wax off the chain post wax are what is most time consuming.
Question - how thorough and necessary is it to break the wax off the individual links after? I don’t obsess over it, but do go through each link moving it each direction a bit to break some off. Wondering if I just do it a very minor amount, toss it on the bike and let the bike break the wax off 1000x easier by movement of my legs? Sure more wax will be on the floor (if on the trainer) but I’m going to have to vacuum it up anyways.
Every time I’m cleaning my bike, moving it off/on the trainer, etc., I’m beyond grateful to have a waxed chain. No more dirty hands or tossing on some disposable gloves. I rotate between 2 chains on my bike and rewax every 6ish weeks assuming I don’t get particularly wet or dirty. In dry conditions, I wouldn’t hesitate to run 300-400 miles on a chain.
I don’t do it at all, haha. I just break it enough so I can get it on the bike. Then once I go out to ride the first 4-5 pedal strokes I just take it easy, then it’s soft and good to go.
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I have an old derailleur pulley on a big nail on a stud in my garage. I just throw a dry, recently waxed chain on it and pull back and forth 8-10 x. Then I flip it and do it again.
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