Silly Putty and Starch: A Legacy of Failure

The Quest

I have now thrice tried and failed to make homemade silly putty. According to an ancient gypsy legend, homemade silly putty can be formed using equal parts liquid starch and all-purpose glue. Seems simple, right?

The first of my problems, and really the core of my failure, is that "liquid starch" is, at best, a loose term. There's any number of online recipes for making liquid starch, all with wildly varying ratios of water and cornstarch. There is concentrated liquid starch that is sold in some stores (Sta-Flo being the prominent brand), though none of the ones I looked in (I later found it, but far too late to be of any use). And most stores that carry laundry starch only have it available in aerosol cans.

Having failed (at the time) to find liquid starch at the store, I opted to go the homemade route. The first recipe I tried was for a more concentrated starch, requiring about a cup of water to a teaspoon or two of cornstarch (I'm too lazy to go find the recipe again and give the exact amounts). I followed the directions, but the end result seemed off. It looked like cloudy water with a bunch of clear snot tendrils floating in it (fortunately for you, I forgot to take pictures). I still mixed it with the glue, and the result was a thick, opaque white fluid that resembled house paint. Not exactly the malleable putty I was hoping for.

My second attempt was with a less concentrated starch, the recipe calling for 4 cups of water and a tablespoon or two of cornstarch. This one actually turned out mostly clear, though very slightly thicker than water. It still seemed way too thin to me, but I was hoping the chemical reaction between the starch and the glue would turn out successfully. Nope. I pretty much just ended up with a cup of diluted glue.

For my third attempt I just said "F--k it" and started mixing stuff together, in whatever proportions I felt like.

I hate you both.

Though for this attempt, I decided to enlist the help of a friend.

Let's do this.

I started by grabbing a spoon and scooping an arbitrary amount of cornstarch into a glass measuring cup. I then added water until I felt like stopping. I mixed the two together until the cornstarch was dissolved. Then I microwaved the mix for 30 seconds, because why not?

My friend and I needed a moment alone together anyway.

The result was a gelatinous mixture that looked like what you'd get if human sweat could congeal.

I took pictures this time. Aren't you glad?

I mixed it with the glue anyway, because it's not like I had high hopes for any of this. The result was...how should I put this...not unlike a certain male bodily fluid which I shall leave unnamed.

NSFW.

Now I was out of glue, so there was really no going beyond this point.

And my friend had left.

I decided to just move on to something else, and maybe try this whole homemade silly putty thing again sometime in the future.

Epilogue

In a later attempt at another bit of unrelated DIY home chemistry (which I will post in the future, assuming I ever get it right), I failed to make the intended result and ended up accidentally creating silly putty in the process.

I've got you now, you elusive jerk.

The chemical mixture was different and it didn't bounce worth a damn, but it was malleable, not sticky, and could pick up newsprint.

Or at least an image from a 20 year old comic book, since I had no newsprint.

Pretty sure that is actual irony.