[hilbert42]

Yeah, the novelty with making chemicals that go bang pretty much wore off in my teenage years although for a time in my 20s I had Miner's Right permit which allowed me to buy and possess Gelignite for said purposes of mining - but I wasn't making the stuff, just using it. Not thought much about it lately but I know that gaining such a permit today is immensely more difficult than when I obtained mine.

Making guncotton/nitrocellulose, picric acid, etc. isn't that hard. In fact, as I've mentioned elsewhere in these posts, I made nitroglycerin in the school lab. (note I'd strongly advise those tempted not to do so - even if you're a good and careful chemist, as such acts are frowned upon with much greater severity than when I did it decades ago).

The fact is that with the type of training we students had had, by the time we'd finished five years of high school chemistry we could make most of those chemicals by following the procedures for doing so. It was only at university we eventually got to understand the underlying theory behind why those procedures were formulated the way they were.

BTW, about the only chemistry I do these days is to figure out what's the best prepackaged cleaner to use in the kitchen. :-)