I've been taken by a fey mood, not gonna lie. You ever be researching two different current hyperfixations, then reach a magical point where they suddenly intersect? That's where I'm at right now with hydrolysis and gems. I've been looking into building a machine to split water into oxygen and hydrogen for cutting stuff, because it turns out they're piss easy to make. Pretty simple so far, this is stuff some people learned in high school chemistry (not me, i never got past math). Hydrogen hot, add oxygen to make hotter, I at least know that from welding.

Then I find out that back in 1902, they figured out how to use just such a device, in conjunction with a special, also-shockingly-uncomplicated furnace, to grow huge corundum gems very quickly. That was also when I found out that corundum is a real thing and not a magic metal from skyrim. Apparently rubies and sapphires are the same thing, both corundum, just with differently colored trace minerals. Corundum itself is clear like diamond and almost as hard, 9 on the Mohs scale. So what's it made of? Just fuckin...aluminum oxide. Yeah, the stuff that's like 40 bucks for a 20 pound bag to use in sandblasters. 10 bucks for 2 pounds of the really pure stuff. It turns it into a big slug or rod of pure, genuine ruby or sapphire called a boule.

So my economy brain kicks in and I start looking up how much these boules go for online. One thing about these boules is that most of the time, you gotta split them in half lengthwise as they cool, so they don't shatter. This is how they're sold, as halves. Looking it up, a sapphire half-boule about 2 inches long goes for about 60 dollars. Sapphires seem to trend more expensive, probably as a result of lab rubies being more widely used industrially. One gemcutter on youtube (who was very nonplussed about this technique and coping about the literally microscopic differences in the resulting gems) said almost derisively that these boules can be grown in an hour or less. At that output and that price, what we have is a machine that takes cheap oxides and turns them into 2 dollars per minute.

And if I can eventually power the hydro machine with a solar panel, I'll be producing sapphires and rubies from nothing but oxides, electrolyte, water and sunlight

But wait, there's more! I have a small little electric jewelry furnace already, which while not suitable for conversion into a corundum furnace, is suitable for annealing the gems, cooling them slowly so the tension releases and they dont crack. So if I get this shit built, I will also have the built-in capability to produce massive, optical-quality gems. Also, being able to completely dab on every family holiday and gift-giving occasion for the rest of my life sounds nice.

So fuck it, why shouldnt I:

-Construct a hydrolysis machine

-Construct a verneuil furnace that is fueled by the hydrolysis machine

-Become a corundum dealer

-Invest the money into China

-???

-

Actually don't tell me why I shouldn't, I'm looking for encouragement in my alchemists journey