Zornhau

Calcinations has been making Greek Fire... the Medieval version of Napalm which so amusingly turned the Arabs and Avars and other barbs back from the walls of Constantinople.

Calcincations says (my formatting:

In two weeks time I shall be at the Lanark Medieval festival, at Lanark Racecourse, near Lanark. I shall be there with the Company of Dawn Duellists, doing our usual demo. 

I shall also have my furnace with me...

 steel_bonnet, who I once saw fight bare-chested sabre, has decided to pursue a new hobby: 

After much talking about it two guys from The Vikings UK went boar hunting in Florida last weekend. 

Meanwhile, calcinations, with his backgarden furnace, continues to follow in the footsteps of the alchemists:

A couple of weeks ago, (before I went away for a week) I made Nitric acid...

I jest you not:

as far as the ancients were concerned, this was an important piece of work. There are many recipes for colouring metals in the early alchemical texts. It is only later, in the last 1,000 years that they are really obsessed with gold and the philosophers stone. 2,000 years ago it seems they were much closer to practical laboratory work, but lacking the knowledge we now have, they thought they were actually transmuting metals.