Drying sand in the oven- anyone try it?

Try steel shot. It is used for shot peening metals for surface treatment. Dry, heavy and works wonders. There are several different sizes also. You will need to contact someone in your area who stocks media for sand/glass blasting equipment.

Use Silica instead or Star Technology's microbearing.

Just buy a bag of dry sand at the store. $5.00

Hi Jeff... new monitors, eh? I filled my Atlantis stands with dry construction sand from Rona. (Sugarbrie's price quote is about right IIRC.) That was maybe seven years ago and the pillars are still dry inside. I didn't have to bake it. I was glad about that, because even more years ago I had attempted to sterilize a small batch of potting soil in the oven. It stunk up the house and didn't dry the soil out completely even after many hours at high heat. ATB, Toby

Tobias- the reason your potting soil stunk was that you were "cooking" the organic matter in the soil, and will actually burn more off the higher you heat it (that's how your self-cleaning oven works.