When you decide making a solar panel, you have made a good choice.It does take some craftsmanship but when you are handy enough to make a plywood bed for your daughters doll, you can certainly make a solar panel. So what else do we need besides craftsmanship, for making a solar panel?  Obviously we need solar cells. A lot of them. A typical solar panel consists of 9×4= 36 solar cells. This is because a single cell gives you 0.5 volts, and in order to get about 18 volts (far over 13.6 volts to charge a lead battery) you would need 36 cells. The cells need to be connected in series to each other. to achieve this voltage. For connecting them we use so called ‘tabbing wire’. We can also buy solar cells with the tab wires already connected to them. So the only thing left is connect them together. We need a soldering iron for this task and a little soldering experience not much. When we use more solar cells in one single solar panel we also need some low drop Schottky diodes. These are to prevent that current from one ’string’ of cells flows into the other string. This would warm up the cells en spill the just captured energy.
Then we want to attach the strings of solar cells in a low profile kind of box. And put a glass lit on it. There are lots of ways to do this. Make sure that the method you chose is the right one for the way you want to mount the panels to your house or to some construction. There is a big difference whether you place the panel on a sloping roof and attach all four corners of the panel to the roof, or you you have a flat roof and you want to place the panels under an angle so they stand on the roof with one side and are held up with some (metal) construction.