I've got a good friend in Dale Edmonds who refinishes Damascus shotgun barrels, we used to get together have a few beers and talk about problems related to old recipes for rusting solutions, he'd ask mutual friends who were chemists and chemical engineers things like "what exactly is 'sweet spirits of nitre'?" He never got a good answer, then we found out that we were asking the wrong people. When people back then needed "sweet spirits of nitre", they didn't go to a chemist they went to a pharmacist. What is really useful is what is called a "National Dispensatory", basically it is the pharmacist's desk reference for the late 1800's and early 1900's. You can find them on ebay sometimes. I am sure that the spirits of wine back then would have had quite a bit of water content as well.
