/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>615738
The worst of the solar cooker designs really. You can reach frying temps with a solar box oven with correct panel design and it is far better since you can cook family size meals in them in the same time as a conventional oven. You just have to design them correctly.

But, to do your project you can have it up and running in about 20 minutes of assembly if you have all the parts. It should take about 3-5 mins to fully cook a single hot dog on a stick.

All you need is cardboard, wood/elmer's glue, and aluminum foil. Something to hold the hotdog (coathanger wire) and something to keep the shape of the cardboard (string) is all you really need. Mix the glue half and half with water and brush it on the cardboard then lay on the aluminum foil, shiny side facing out, and let it cure.

All you need are two strips of cardboard about 1 foot wide by around 3-4 feet long. You can glue pieces of cardboard together by overlapping them and using the glue mixture then compressing them together with books. That's what I do to make larger panels of cardboard. Once the glue is dried, make a big plus sign out of the 2 cardboard strips and glue them together like that. Then apply the foil to them.

Punch one hole in each of the ends of all the plus sign ends. Run a string through the holes of two ends that are across from each other. Start tightening the string up to bring up the ends to make the parabola. Do this with both sides. You may need to bend the cardboard in many places to give it a segmented appearance so you can get the shape just right. You want the focal point to be well below the string since you don't want to burn the string. Do that by making the dip of the parabols deeper.

Then turn it towards the sun, prop it up correctly, and put a hotdog in the center of the focal point. If it does not cook the hotdog fast enough for you then you can add 2 more strips of foil-covered cardboard and make it into an 8-ended shape instead of a 4-ended plus sign shape.