I use wire, not cable for drowners. No need to wax or dye that. I do dye and wax the drowning locks, Not necessary, although it will keep them from rusting. But they are attached to the the trap and it is easier to dye and wax it all than trying to keep the drowning lock out of the liquid, and it certainly doesn't hurt anything. If you end up with some wax in the slide hole on the lock and are worried about it a punch or screwdriver would remove it in a few seconds. Personally I would just use the end of the wire that I am sliding through it anyways when setting the trap. If you leave your traps in long enough for them to be good and hot you won't have thick wax plugging stuff anyways, I have had that a time or two because I hook several traps together with wire and lower them into the pot together, then hang a bend of the wire over the side of the pot to grab and lift them back out by. That wire is run through the chain and while I am careful to make sure the traps are well and completely submerged I am not always so careful about the chain and there have been occasions when the drowning lock was on the surface or above it and got just dipped into the wax as I went to pull the traps out. No big deal, push the wax out of the hole with the drowner wire and kind of run the tip of the wire around the edges of the hole to scrap wax off, when you go to set the trap. Good to go in 5-10 seconds.