Ok, this all depends on how hot you want things to get in the melter. I find if you just use the plate glass, on an enclosed space, you will get around 200° F (Yeah I know, I do all the tech support for the family, through email. 90° C). That would be all you would want. The wax becomes liquid at those temperatures and heating it much more will cause it to degrade in color and quality.
To get the thing REALLY going, you would want to face the inside surfaces with aluminum foil, paint it all black inside with high temperature paint, add a plate of iron to set things on and absorb the heat, reflector panels, and double pane of TEMPERED glass. You can use strips of 1/8 in (3 mm) paper board, like the stuff you get when you buy a shirt, to make a frame to hold the plates of glass apart.
I must emphasize the Tempered glass part, I built one of these about 7 years ago to cook food, and used quarter inch (6mm) glass. I had the whole thing on a garden cart, with a giant funnel made with foil covering corrugated paper (Cardboard box) as the reflectors. Without any mass inside the oven thermometer read 350° F, and I leaned over the thing to take a photo, leaned back, and the glass went *GINK*!
It cracked perpendicular to the face of the plate. In a big wavy line from one side to the other. The big problem with working with this as an oven, any pot of any appreciable size holding water would not get hotter than 180° F (80° C). Add the clouds shading and passing, the vegetables I put in there just went though the process they do in your gut. Smelled just like Horse Manure.
So Lesson is:
- Works best in full sun like out in the field, not the woods.
- Works better on cloudless days.
- Works better for heating food already cooked.
- Does an excellent job for heating materials to lower "high" temperatures.
Oh, and just melting wax I don't see any problem with using regular glass.
Topic: macho solar wax melter (Read 3684 times)