I have also read the Otto Snow book, and although there are
some good things inbetween most of it is crap, seen from our perspective. There are almost never mentioned anything about yields etcetc. It seems a bit "festerish"(i.e. not very good) so to speak
. There has been sporadic reports of successes with Zn/HCl reductions, but i don't think anything conclusive ever came out from it. I believe Sunlight wrote something on the topic, try using the search engine.
I think that Zn/HCl reductions of the nitropropenes are only attractive to the aspiring chemst, as they
seem easy and OTC, but as with the bromosafrole + ammonia / methylamine it's no good in the long run, as there are no conclusive reports on either. Better save yourself the grief of failure, and go directly for the more established routes. The reagents might be a bit harder to get, but it is
definately worth it.
Once you master those basics, it might be worth a shot to tweak the parameters of the aforementioned reactions and get some conclusive results.
Good luck!
Regards
Bandil