Homemade Anti-Bacterial Gel Experiment (Flop!)

After making my homemade hair gel, I got to thinking....I wonder if I can make Anti-bac with this?  Now, hair gel leaves a little bit of a sticky feeling on your hands, so I wasn't sure.  But it was such a cheap experiment, how could I not try it?  Here's what I did.

Ingredients needed:

Ingredients:

1T (heaping) Corn Starch

1/4C Rubbing Alcohol

1C Cool Tap Water

Small Pot

Fine Mesh Strainer

Metal Spoon

Start by pouring your cool water in your pot.

Add in a heaping tablespoon of corn starch

Stir well, scraping the bottom of the pan to loosen the corn starch.

Starch tends to make a bee line for the bottom of the pan and

turn into a little pancake, but loosens easily when stirred.

Put pan on stove over medium high heat.  About a 6 on my stove.

Stir the entire time, scraping the bottom of the pan continually.

Bring to a boil, continually stirring.

Once it boils, you can remove it from the heat.  This was the 

consistency I ended up with.  Kinda like gravy!

When cool, you can add your 1/4C of rubbing alcohol.

Mix well.  Position strainer over a measuring cup or 

other container and pour gel through.

 You may have some clumps in the strainer if you didn't stir as

well as you thought.  Discard them.  Don't force them through.

This next portion is the "what NOT to do portion".  Because I 

tried some and it left my hands a little bit sticky, I added another

whole cup of water.  What was I thinking?

Well, then it was just too runny.  I thought....what if I added a 

Tablespoon of the homemade hand lotion I made yesterday!!!

Well, duh.  No surprise, it didn't incorporate at all and then I 

had little floaty bits of lotion in my anti-bac!  Derrrr!

So, I had to go back through and add another T of corn starch, 

boil it again, blah blah blah.  That was dumb.  Anyway, I covered it

with plastic wrap overnight and I ended up with this.

Doesn't look too bad, right?  Consistency was about what I had hoped.

The problem...it still stinks to high heaven like alcohol...pure alcohol.  Maybe I should have added less?  And this was the whole 1/4C to two batches now.  I did not add in any more alcohol on the 2nd batch.  Have you ever purchased really cheap anti-bac and it just reeks of pure alcohol?  That's what this was like. 

In all fairness, I'm not sure how much alcohol is required to actually consider this hand sanitizer.  So, hopefully it's doing what it's intended for! 

An interesting update:  When I tried the goo on my hands today, it didn't feel sticky.  The lotion must have helped.  It did take longer to dry than the store bought stuff though.  I got to thinking...once I find a suitable container for this, I probably won't have the overbearing alcohol smell because I didn't really notice it on my hands so much.  It's mostly just having that large measuring cup sitting there, emitting the odor.  Once it's in a container, that won't be so much of a problem.

The only other thing that was a little odd about this was that the more I rubbed in an attempt to dry it, I ended up getting little crumbles on my hands.  Like maybe the cornstarch reacts differently with alcohol.   It didn't really bug me, but it was different than the store bought in that regard. 

Would I consider this experiment a success, not really.  But I wouldn't call it a failure either.  I did make a stabilized gel with rubbing alcohol in it that kills germs.  It's just not what we're used to.

The grand total:  2C of sanitizer for 15 cents.  Pretty cheap!  

Ya know, looking back...I probably should have googled this to see if there were any recipes out there.  This was just a lightbulb moment that I acted upon.  It sure was fun to experiment though!

Update:  I tried to make some homemade hand lotion with my homemade gel.  It didn't work.  However, I really liked how when I added the oil, it really improved the texture of the hair gel.  So, I tried it with my hand sanitizer, too.

I added 1T canola oil to my already made sanitizer

and gave it a ride in my mini processor.

It really improved the texture of the sanitizer!

You can even tell by looking at it that it's smoother.

The good news!  That weird, crumbly stuff is gone and it leaves my hands soft!  Yayyy!

The veggie oil adds a whopping 2c to the total.  So, two cups of sanitizer for 17 cents!

And another (not so happy) update?
Update:  I've now read  here (under the comment section) that hand sanitizer needs at least 60% alcohol to effectively kill (most) bacteria.  I was so excited when I found this post because her version doesn't have a ton of alcohol either.   What a bummer.  I'll have to find another recipe, I think. Darn!  Oh, well. It WAS an experiment after all.  And that's what you do...see if it works, or not!

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