As teenage boys, in my day (around the launch of the Sputnik), instead of surfing trains, burning rubber, or grafittiing walls, we used to con our long-suffering mothers into signing permission slips and head off to the local manufacturing chemist (Selby's) and spend our pocket money on Winchester Quarts of concentrated Sulphuric and Nitric acids (which we carried home on the bars of our bicycles) and spend out spare time dissolving collectable silver coinage and our parents silver cutlery in Nitric acid in order to make constituents for silver fulminate to use in detonators for our home-made nitro-cellulose.
The wonder of it is that we all made it through adolescence with all our fingers and eyes intact!
Some of us even became productive citizens, with PhDs to prove it.
Even though plenty of reddish nitrous oxide fumes were generated, none of us appeared to suffer any effects (just don't breathe it in) and the products of our backyard experiments resulted in some very satisfying loud bangs; as well as some problems with the less than understanding neighbours.
I guess that interest in hands-on basic science is no longer in fashion, and would more than likely become the subject of a Homeland Security investigation in these these less carefree times
In our day, the librarians had not yet removed all the interesting books on applied chemistry from the bookshelves, and much voluntary study was engaged thereupon.
Anyway, the point is that our home-made silver nitrate worked just fine for the intended task (just make sure to read up about its less desirable properties and take care not to splash any of it, and especially the Nitric Acid, on yourself at any time. It is quite caustic!)
