Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Flare for Cooking

Remember how I said I was going to make a solar oven? (Get it? Solar...flare...) I was looking at designs online, and saw that most of the designs used aluminum foil (or, if you're a child of WW I like me, "tin foil") as the reflector. You may remember that the movers damaged a bunch of our stuff recently. Including a full-length mirror. They broke the top third off, but the rest was in once piece. I say "was", because earlier today I was cutting it into bits with a glass cutter to make a solar oven. I've never used a glass cutter before, though I've had this particular tool for over 20 years. (Pretty cool, too.) It's a happy coincidence that the small third of the mirror was sitting in a cardboard box with a lid, waiting to be tossed out with today's trash. Mine is going to look a bit different, though. I'll have angled bits of mirror inside to bounce more of the heat around inside. And I'll also have a grill-type thing in it. Adjustable, of course.

I just like the fact that the broken mirror will still be useful. I'm annoyed that I threw out the broken glass from our big picture, though. (It was reflection-free glass.) I probably could have salvaged a piece of that. Oh well.

I'll post pictures of it when I'm done. I've got other solar ideas rolling around in my head. What else are you going to think about when it's 105 outside?

1 comment:

Wontar said...

That's exactly what I did. Used a piece of wood that used to be part of the dresser as both a straight edge as well as a "breaking platform", and gave it a quick hit with a towel both under and over the glass. Pretty straight, clean cuts. On the glass, none on me.