/diy/ - Do It Yourself

A loaf of bread and some chicken.

Having double layers of glass on the cooker vastly increases the temperatures inside. When I first made this cooker, I did not use tempered glass on the inner layer and it cracked. The outer layer does not get hot enough to crack so it is only cheap plate glass. The tempered glass needs to be ordered to size and cost me $30. Most solar cookers don't need tempered glass since they are all low temp cookers.

Here's a blackberry cake in the large cooker.

Here're pics of the collapsible solar cooker cooking pizza.

In case it has not escaped anyone, I normally use junk foods to test the cookers. The real cooking begins when I've worked the bugs out.

Cooking meatloaf in the large cooker.

Note that the temperature is not very high. This is because when you put cold food into an oven the heat is being soaked up by the food and anything else in the oven. Once the food has cooked fully (190F inside) then there's a sharp spike in the ambient air temperature of the oven. It is this spike of heat that can quickly burn food.

Here's my large solar cooker with the bread riser. Note that in these pics the large cooker has handles and wheels. For scale, the tops of the reflectors happens to be 4 feet wide and the bread rising box is an office paper box that normally holds two stacks of paper.

This is not a cooker, but instead a solar bread riser. If you make one of these you need to make sure you don't get it too hot too quickly.

Normally, you can toss a loaf of bread in to a solar cooker and cook it as it is. This is because most solar cookers are rather cool and take a while to cook. The bread rises normally and then cooks.

However, in my solar cooker the temps are that of a conventional oven and I need to either rise the bread separately or keep the reflectors off until the bread is ready. I developed this bread riser out of curiosity. It works very well.

This was also an experiment. I was trying to make the smallest solar cooker possible that could cook fast. By small, I mean when not in use. This is a survival solar blanket. It worked, but the cooking time was very long and aligning it was a problem.

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This isn't /b/.

Here is a solar funnel cooker I made. It works well enough, but you can't fold up the reflector. I abandoned this design because of that.

Here's another one I made. A very tiny one. I was just experimenting one day and trying to use house hold items and trash. It worked well. I didn't need the glue, only the tape.

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Here's the 3rd one I made. This one is designed similar to my large one, but is micro size and made to be collapsible and easily transported. I normally keep this one behind the seat in my truck. It comes in handy on long hikes and camping.

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Here's the beginning of a 3rd cooker designed for winter use when the sun is low in the sky. I've not finished this one.

>>47064
Here's my second one. Much bigger, uses 2 panes of glass with the inner pane tempered glass. It has around R23 insulation and reaches about 450F. The cooking chamber could be a bit bigger. This pic is before I put wheels on it and handles to run it around easily. I'd done a LOT of cooking in this thing.

I've made about 6-8 solar cookers. The best seems to be a well-insulated solar box oven with trapezoid reflectors. My best one reaches 450F.

Here's a few pics.

This one was my very first one. Bulky, small, but it worked. I used a black painted mason jar to cook with.