Quote Originally Posted by Aemilius Paulus View Post
As for nitroglycerine, I read the Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, where he meticulously described how to make nitroglycerine just from the things you can find lying around anywhere in nature. Not hard.
heh didn't know about that, wouldn't recommend trying to make it though it's severely unstable stuff.


Easy. Acids are not difficult to make, and I have read how to produce them. Seriously, how do you think they made they made sulphuric acid in the 8th century? I will use coal to obtain the sulphuric acid (not awfully efficient, but pretty simple), and then use the sulphuric acid on copper nitrate to produce nitric acid.
and how to make/extract the reactants to make them.
Oh i know sulphuric acid is easy to make, but nitric acid...where would you get copper nitrate from in 272bc? a better source of nitrate would be saltpetre which is much easier to produce given the technology at the time

First of all, it is not "nickle", but nickel!!! The former one is unobtainable as it does not exist. But yeah, those two I said that I "may" do if I could. It all depends on how hot of a furnace I can make. They are not essential. I will teach Romans how to make steel, and if I can get them to produce stainless steel, well, that is a bonus. And titanium was rather wistful thinking. At best, I can extract it in an exceedingly impure form. Which is why I did not guarantee the success of that operation.
Yeah my bad there simple spelling mistake, i really think your underestimating the amount of knowledge and expertise that goes into making these things, there's more to making steel that blowing air through molten iron.