Driven by fascination with the subject of alchemy as well as his avarice, Friedrich immediately directed that his Stuttgart summerhouse be converted into a laboratory for Honauer, and granted him further facilities at Kirchheim unter Teck, a short ride away from the city. He placed a large initial order for 200,000 ducats of gold, but Honauer said he did not have a sufficient quantity of the reagents necessary for such a large undertaking. They agreed on a monthly target of 36,000 ducats, to run indefinitely. The duke then arranged for thirty-six hundredweight and eighteen pounds (nearly two tons) of iron to be transported more than 150 miles from his armoury in Mömpelgard (now Montbéliard in France) to provide Honauer with the “raw material” he needed. Honauer’s order for additional chemicals necessary for the operation was equally impressive: 1030 pounds of saltpetre, 1852 pounds of lead, as well as similar quantities of “white copper” (cupronickel) and “mountain antimony”, and other reagents.