Right now we are still in a wet weather stall. While the cold, rain, snow and general overcast nature of the sky is a blessing for the drought, it is a bane on the solar ovens. All we have made are sad little biscuits, and a bunch of reject ovens that get wet, bent cardboard wings from heavy wind, and we went out and got a propane tank/burner so we don't starve when we can't work the ovens. It will come together, keep watching for updates, and there will be a working oven soon.
There is still enough info for yall to go solar on your own, and there will be an order form if you want to skip the building process (which seems to be tough ;)) and have one shipped to you while supporting the kitchen at the same time. Email us in the meantime if you have any feedback, questions or would like to reserve one.
We are building our first solar oven! We've used them at gatherings before, but not ours, Joes. He's got a great article linked here, and we're basically following his plan.
Except since glass is the real variable in the plans, in our opinion, we went for glass first and not boxes. Our local glass company wanted to charge $3 a square foot so this adds up if you want a larger cooker. So we went to the CTR (Choose the Right-- gotta love Utah :)) thrift store and picked up the stereo cabinet in the picture for $8. We plan on using the nice square top and hinges for one cooker and the bigass cabinet part for a bigass cooker.
2/6 Bob got his cabinet cooker up to 270 today, but knows it still needs more chinking and a rebuild of the wings.
We found a great source of cardboard by driving down industrial parkway (most cities and big towns have these) where we stumbled upon a great resource at the HVAC Co.-- carboard pallets! These are double-thick panels with double-thick supporting "mini-boxes" in between. The picture post I have of it will give you an idea. But, as Bob discovered and Joe's article recommended was that these are no good for the wings as they are too heavy. I am peeling out one layer from the middle of the wings for the other cooker. Made out of the glass top that would cover the record player. Pictures soon.
2/3
Lined the box with cardboard (see pic?) and took off the glass top that covered the record player, to be used to make a second cooker. Build mongo (anyone still use that word?) flaps that we need to get more foil to cover, and should have a pic of it mostly set-up tomorrow. Even with what we had the oven was getting warm, so we're excited!!
Haven't got a solar battery unit yet, so many to choose from out there, but like the Xpower packs. They are not much more money than the other links I've seen where you build them yourself. One step at a time.
Freecycle may be a really good way to get cardboard, glass and black paint for this project.
