Anyone here build a solar oven?

[Prepper]

I'm wondering if anyone here has tried to build a solar oven before. I realize it is winter now, but all this beautiful shining sun is giving me inspiration.

I've been looking on solarcooking.org. It doesn't look too challenging, other than I need to figure out the right design and perhaps improve on what's there. Most of the box solar ovens that I've found online have reflective surface on the inside, under the glass. This is puzzling me a bit. I would have expected it to be better to paint the inside flat black, put the glass over it, and then have reflectors outside the glass reflecting more sun back in. Otherwise, some of the light would be reflected back out.

Any thoughts?

 

[patrickiv]

I've seen two types of these work when I was a kid. The first kind consists of a parabolic mirror(sheet metal fixed in a parabolic shape) with a metal tube affixed at the focus. We would put hot dogs in the metal tube and the mirror would focus sunlight right at them. The second kind was the same as you described, it consisted of a cardboard box with aluminum foil on the inside and on the opened flaps of the box. A cooking vessel was put inside and a pane of glass used to "seal" in the hot air. This was good for baking but took a long time to heat up. The hot dog cooker was the most efficient but you can only put small quantities of food into it at one time. I've only used these in the summer, so I can't attest to their effectiveness in colder climates.

 

[cstockwell]

I have seen the cardboard box and it took a LONG time to cook a potato. I was going to try to use one of the directtv dishes I covered with reflective foil to heat a foil or metal box one day to use as a small oven. I know that dish makes a small concentrated spot that gets extremely hot. It will burn a black spot that starts smoking and smoldering on a piece of wood within a few seconds when you place it in the focus point.