First of all, welcome to the GB forums, Ivan.
Now, about your problems... Kerosene does exist in the game, but it's very hard to come by, I've had the same problem with making fire obstructions as you did.. It does appear in inventors' shops once in awhile, so you just have to be persistent.
There is a bug involving Maxim which prevents him from making you a mechanised gun. By the way, the auto loading chamber is the same thing as loading mechanism. There is a fix found on
Terra Arcanum which handles that problem.
Finally, some schematics require of you to have some knowledge in two skills. These can be increased by purchasing tech manuals in Tarant (the northernmost building in the city). They cover all tech disciplines, cost 750 each and each of them increases one of your skills by 10 (if I recall correctly).
Arcanum is a pretty buggy game, but the patch fixes most of them. There are also unofficial fan-made patches that fix certain bugs. Also, the patch applies to the entire game, so no worries.
Hope this helped.
