Qin Chuan and his three hundred subordinates spent the night on a mountain beam looking for a leeward hillside.

In the era of Xiaoice, the November night was extremely cold, but fortunately, his subordinates brought a quilt and a mat and lit dozens of bonfires in the leeward, which was not a big deal.

Dong Liang didn't dare to come to him for trouble, but the people sent by Lao Huang did find him, and brought a piece of news: The grain transportation team of Lan County had been set aside this morning, a total of 600 mule and horse carts, escorted by 1,200 men and horses from Zhang, Ma, Chen, and Fan, along the Shi's Roar Valley into Luya Mountain.

Before dawn the next day, Qin Chuan took three hundred horsemen to the north along the Fen River, and arrived at Laoliugou five miles away from Ningwuguan at dusk.

After converging the two men, Qin Chuan let the horses rest in place, cut down trees to make the illusion of encampment, and sent troops to drive away the spies who followed behind the big families.

But as soon as the sky darkened, he went to Ningwu Pass to knock on the waist card of 100 households, spent 100 taels of silver up and down, and took advantage of the night to lead 600 people to pass quietly.

The spies of the Zhang family and several other big families had been following him, but when they saw him camping in Laoliugou and seeing him send troops out to drive him away, they ran away.

Early the next morning, the spies secretly approached Lao Liugou, and after finding that his 600 people had disappeared out of thin air, they hurried back to Lanxian to report the news.

At this moment, the grain transport team has passed through Lanzhou, and arrived near Sanjing Town, which is still 200 miles away from Yatou Pass, and it is estimated that it will take five days to walk because of the heavy grain truck.

Qin Chuan has already left Ningwu Pass, and it is also two hundred miles away from Mo'er Mountain, but he rode lightly and hurriedly, and he could reach his destination in two days.

If all goes well, he will arrive two days earlier than the grain convoy of the big families.

Two days is enough.

……

On the third day of Qinchuan's expedition, Li Xuejing installed the first boring machine.

On this day, Wang Jizong, Chen Zhan, Zhao Mancai, Yan Sanqi and dozens of blacksmiths in Mengjiazhuang, as well as more than 300 blacksmith apprentices, all put down their work and ran to see the boring machine of the chief steward.

The structure of this thing is not complicated, the base is wooden, there is a smooth slide rail on it, there are three clips on the slide rail, which is used to fix the barrel, the other end of the slide rail is the drill bit, which is sleeved with three bearings, the position of two of the bearings is fixed, the bearing close to the side of the drill bit is movable, and when the barrel is pushed over, this bearing can be adjusted at will, which not only ensures the stability of the drill bit, but also does not affect deep drilling.

The horizontal line of the slide rail and the drill bit is to fill the water pipe made of sheep intestines according to the method taught by the big steward, first put them together to make a mark, and then stick the two ends on both sides of the slide rail, and when the water level at both ends is the same as the mark, it is the horizontal line.

Then a round of ink lines is punched left and right with the ink fountain line to get the exact route of the drill bit and the barrel.

The drill bit is made by hammering wrought iron, and then wrapped into a carbon mass with the toner powder mixed with water, put it into the crucible, and then put the crucible into the furnace to burn and boil, and after the carbon mass in the crucible is boiled red, take it out and knock the carbon ball, take out the drill bit and put it into the water to quench, and then put the drill bit back into the furnace for slow fire calcination.

In the words of the chief steward, the carbon mass is put into the crucible and boiled is called carburizing, so that the drill bit forms medium and high carbon steel, and the quenching makes the surface of the drill bit extremely hard, but the quenched drill bit is very brittle and extremely easy to break, so it is put back into the furnace for calcination, which is called tempering, improving the toughness of the drill bit, so that the drill bit will not be easily broken.

According to the instructions of the chief steward, Li Xuejing made five groups of drill bits with different carburizing and tempering times, a total of 20 drill bits, and carefully recorded the carburizing and tempering time of each drill bit, quenching materials, etc., and when the time came, he saw which drill bit was the most durable, and used that set of data as the standard to manufacture the drill bit.

The bearings, slide rails, clamps, etc. on the boring machine are also quenched and tempered to ensure the wear resistance and strength of the bearings.

Li Xuejing did not engage in a linkage device for the time being, but installed a round wheel behind the drill bit, with a belt on it, and temporarily pulled it by manpower.

After assembling the boring machine and carefully measuring the level and straightness, Li Xuejing installed the long drill bit under the dense crowd around him, and an apprentice pulled the belt behind, and the drill bit rotated quickly in an extremely stable state.

The people around him suddenly let out bursts of exclamations, even Chen Zhan also stroked his beard and admired, he and Sun Daren in Denglai when making firearms, improved the upright drilling machine, stone grinding drilling machine, foot drilling machine, etc., but has not been able to strengthen the stability of the drill bit, the drill barrel still has to rely on the experience and eyesight of skilled craftsmen to control, accidentally let the drill bit deviate a little, a hard-forged barrel will be scrapped.

Even if Sun Daren strictly controls the forging link, the pass rate of the barrel is still less than three percent, and now the boring machine developed by the chief steward is fixed by three bearings, and the stability is higher than that of any previous drilling machine, and the qualified rate of the barrel drilled out will inevitably be greatly improved.

Moreover, the previous drilling machine consumes a huge amount of manpower, the general stone grinding drilling machine and the stepping drilling machine need at least two people to control, the upright drilling machine needs at least three people, if the linkage device drawn by the chief steward is made, let a mule and horse drive several boring machines, only one craftsman is needed to control it, greatly saving manpower, and can also speed up the speed of drilling.

After determining the production method of the drill bit and making a better quality drill bit, the time for drilling a barrel is estimated to be shortened by 30% to 50%, plus the time for making other workpieces, the time for a craftsman to make a flintlock pistol can be controlled within one month.

As the saying goes, if you want to do a good job, you must first sharpen your tools.

Li Xuejing was also very excited, pressed the barrel on the furniture, determined the height and straightness and fixed it, and after lubricating the slender drill bit, he slowly pushed the slide rail and pushed the barrel into the drill bit.

I only heard a slight metal delivery sound in the barrel, and when the slender drill bit poked out of the back end of the barrel, I saw many fine iron filings and lubricating oil sticking to the drill bit.

Li Xuejing carefully removed the iron filings, smeared a little lubricating oil again, the apprentice pulled the belt, and the drill bit slowly passed through the barrel again.

After repeating this several times, after cutting off the iron lump in the barrel, Li Xuejing replaced it with a drill bit as large as the predetermined caliber and slowly drilled into the barrel.

This process lasts at least ten days, and even more than a month if the drill bit is not of good quality.

After drilling out the straight chamber, it is necessary to poke a quadrangular steel bar into it and scrape the chamber to a brilliant finish.

The next step is to grind the outer wall of the barrel to unify the thickness of the barrel in all directions, and then to open the screw in the tail and screw it in with a large screw to close the tail.

There are no screws, not even iron nails, and all wooden or iron workpieces are riveted or welded.

But Daming is not short of smart people, Qin Chuan only drew the screws and screws, and Li Xuejing suddenly realized that he could understand it at one point.

And then, the screws just appeared.

……

On the morning of the fourth day of Qin Chuan's expedition, Wang Jizong, Chen Zhan, Li Xuejing, dozens of blacksmiths and hundreds of apprentices gathered at the foot of a hillside not far from Mengjiazhuang, staring wide and preparing to watch Zhao Mancai's performance.

Zhao Mancai made a compilation to the crowd of onlookers, and said with a smile on his face: "Thank you for appreciating the light, thank you, please stay for a while, this is the beginning." ”

After that, Zhao Mancai carried a bird gun, ran to the wooden platform that had been prepared not far away, took out a small bag of granular gunpowder from the platform, weighed one penny and two cents, poured it into the barrel, filled it with lead, poked it in with a whole strip and compacted it, poured some gunpowder on the fire door, and led a four- or five-foot-long gunpowder line out.

After everything was in order, Zhao Mancai fixed the bird gun on the wooden platform, ran to the end of the powder line with a huff, lit the powder line with a fire fold, and then threw himself into a nearby pit in embarrassment.

The powder line slipped and burned to the arquebus, igniting the primer of the fire door, only to hear a loud "bang", the arquebus raised a cloud of black smoke, iron filings flew sideways, and the surrounding leaves snorted.

Zhao Mancai took a look from the earthen pit, and his face suddenly turned pale.

Blown up.

Chen Zhan frowned and strode over, picking up the exploded bird gun on the wooden platform to take a closer look.

"Lord Chen save me, Lord save me."

Zhao Mancai rolled over and hugged Chen Zhan's thigh.

Wang Jizong coughed lightly in the back: "Mr. Zhao, the chief steward is not a violent master, the gunpowder is dangerous, it is inevitable that there will be some mistakes, Mr. Zhao can rest assured, Wang guarantees with his life, and the chief steward will not pursue criminal responsibility." ”

"Thank you, Mr. Wang, thank you, Lord Wang."

Zhao Mancai breathed a sigh of relief, and hugged Wang Jizong's thigh again and was grateful.

Wang Jizong had no choice but to help him up personally.

Chen Zhan on the side suddenly asked, "How much medicine did you put in?" ”

Zhao Mancai replied: "One penny and two cents." ”

"That's a lot."

Chen Zhan put down the bird gun and said, "The gunpowder prepared by the chief steward for you is more powerful than the previous gunpowder medicine, and according to the previous dosage, this shoddy bird gun can't bear it." ”

"First reduce it to eight points, and then increase it to one penny to gradually test, and then determine the dosage after the new type of firearm is made."