Drying Flock, etc

Substrate, aka sand for aquariums,
is sometimes packaged wet or damp.

It's possible that during your journey you'll come across some pretty cool sand, flock and so on that might be wet. (Beach, flooding, aquarium substrate, etc)

I've also picked up bags of small shells that have a lot of moisture in them, which releases once you put it in a smaller container, soaking everything.

Wet flock is bad. Aside from problems gluing, wet flock won't flow or cover nicely and you'd be surprised how quickly you turn terrain into a mouldy mess when you have moisture in a sealed container.

So dry it!

It's a simple matter really.

 Having recently been to the ocean, I collected a bottle of sand. (Which, btw, is something all hobbyists might as well do... always bring home a bottle of sand when going places.) The problem was that it was SOAKED.

So, this needed to be dried.

I used Saran wrap here... while not idea, we had a LOT after the move.

Spread the sand over as large an area as is reasonable. (Bigger piles won't dry as fast) Preferably, spread it on paper towels. They'll absorb the moisture AND dry, creating a perpetual cycle of drying.

Place this all somewhere warm like outside. Hotter the better. DO NOT use your oven or anything else for food prep. Some of these special sands will emit bad gasses.

and dry!

Once it's all dry, gather it up and dump it in to a container for storage. I recommend a couple things here...

First, save the hassle and, use a funnel to pour the sand.

Second, only pour a little sand in to a flock container and pour the rest in to larger baggies than can be packed away.

JUST BE SURE TO CHECK THE WEATHER...

it proceeded to rain for days and took ages to finally dry out.

Side note... shortly after moving to our new city, some jerk stole that Mountie that my dad made us :(