You will be amused -- my *first* thought upon reading this and the wiki article was -- oh, wouldn't it be fun & crazy to make some saltpetre for the Arts & Sciences competition (there is a category called 'alchemy' -- this would totally fit. The main difficulty being it would have to be for next year, and things don't rot well in this neck of the woods), and my second was the Mythbuster episode, where they demostrated that there was nothing wrong with Kirk's gunpowder, and a lot wrong with his bamboo cannon.

Wish I could be there!