"Blue Van Dan" Ochs: Vacuum Tubes Do All The Cooking

Dan lives the schoolie/van life and his main cooker uses a vacuum tube, framed for carrying and for the tube to survive the three-foot drop test. We like to say among our solar cooking friends, that these devices are truly "Set it and forget it" --but Dan cautions, "Don't forget it!" You can follow Dan's laid back lifestyle along with 10,000 others, by linking to: / bluevandan

[@caseyhalone]

Where do you order just the tube?

[@SolarCookingMuseum]

A tube of the size Dan and others have used is no longer available for individual orders that I'm aware of. I'd suggest checking eBay and other e-tailers for tubes, though most I see out there are only 2.5" diameter, a tricky small size for cooking things.

[@gordybishop2375]

Sadly I dropped mine two feet and broke a tube. Luckily got the last one in stock. Only way to break it is too abuse it badly.

[@SolarCookingMuseum]

I wonder if the glass back then was higher quality... borosilicate? tempered? I hear so many cases where the thermal shock imploded tubes, maybe it was carelessness with a heated tube and sloshing cold soup like the disaster on one cooking show on cable...

[@gordybishop2375]

@@SolarCookingMuseum never had that issue…yet.

[@justinw1765]

@@SolarCookingMuseum They are supposed to use borosilicate for these since they handle temp changes much better than soda lime glass (and even better than tempered). But China being China, it's possible that they have been switching out the borosilicate for tempered or even soda lime glass.
It's actually not that difficult to make a vacuum insulated cooker. Not using tubes, but larger cylindrical glass containers.