In a couple of episodes of Good Eats, Alton Brown constructs a simple dehydrator from a box fan, cellulose furnace filters, bungee cords and dehydrator tray liners.
Any opinions on how well this would work as the first step in drying mushrooms? In this video, he uses it with fruit, so it seems that it would work just as well with mushrooms. Start the drying with one of these and then into a desiccant chamber.

For anyone who hasn't watched it yet skip to 1.03 to get to where he begins talking about how to construct the dehydrator.

I remember watching that episode and thinking the same thing, but I never got a chance to try it out. Anyway AB specifically states in the video that his goal is to remove about 75% of the liquid out of his chosen fruits, and he states that it would take 42-48 hours to reach a 75% water loss, although that is with pieces of cut fruits like apples mangoes or strawberries... I'd say give it a shot and see if it works, I can't imagine why it wouldn't work, you might even be able to get more than a 75% water loss if you leave them in longer.

If anyone tries this method let us know how it works! I'm curious to see if it works too

Hopefully I'll be trying it in a month or so, if everything works out. It looks promising.