/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>47573
The clear stuff for solar cookers is referred to as "glazing". you can use plastic or glass depending on how hot your cooker will get inside. A lot temp cooker that focuses light directly to a pot like the CooKit can use plastic sincethe plastic will not be getting hot. You can use plastic oven bags used to roast turkey. You can use a simple grocery store LDPE plastic bag, like used for my funnel cooker here >>47097 which has a cage of coat hangers to keep it from touching the cooking container (which is very hot.)

For the medium range temperature cookers you can use regular plate glass like that in picture frames or windows. Make sure they are slightly loose fitting in their frame. Thermal expansion can crack them when they otherwise would not crack; give them room to expand and contract.

For the hotter solar cookers, around 250Fand higher, I recommend using an inner glazing made of tempered glass. You need to either tailor your cooker to the size of tempered glass or order a special size for your needs. Don't try cutting tempered glass yourself or you'll end up with a pile of little squares of glass at worst.

In this image, you can see the inner plate glass of my large cooker has cracked around the 250F mark. I was actually pretty happy when that happened because the temps were getting higher than all the tutorials I'd been reading.

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