That whole 'silica gel packets can be recharged' thing actually works

I kept seeing people online say you can just bake those little silica gel packets to dry them out and reuse them. Sounded like one of those lazy hacks that doesn't really work. But I had a bunch of them from shoe boxes and electronics, and my tool chest in my garage in Phoenix was getting rusty in the summer humidity. So I tried putting a bunch in a baking dish at 200 degrees for like 2 hours. I weighed them before and after. They went from 8 grams to 4.5 grams so they definitely lost moisture. Now I put them back in the chest and the rust has stopped spreading. It took maybe 30 minutes of actual effort over a week to collect them all and dry them out. Has anyone else actually tested this with a scale or am I just lucky?

2 comments

2 Comments

wood.noah8d ago

Same here, I dried mine in the oven and my camera gear stopped fogging up inside the case.

miabennett8d ago

Oven drying just sounds risky for camera gear honestly.