Chen Xian had long learned about the price of swords in this era through Wu Liang's eldest brother.

Ordinary waist knives, cheap only one or two dollars, high-quality steel knives, the price of seven or eight times, can cut gold and chop iron knife is not twenty or thirty, don't think about it.

The craftsmanship of the katana created by Chen Xian is based on the forging technology of the Japanese swordsmiths in the Tang Dynasty of China, after a hundred years of exploration and development, and after the optimization and sorting of modern material technology, it is definitely the process of leading the times in this era, and the katana created with this set of processes is definitely more than the so-called treasure knife of this era in terms of quality, and the price is definitely more than 30 times.

But Chen Xian can recognize the reality very well, this is not an era that emphasizes fair trade, if there is no Yang Yuanwai as a middleman, let Chen Xian sell knives by himself, the biggest possibility is that not only will he not get money, but the knives will also be scolded, and if he is unlucky, he may even get into big trouble.

In this transaction, Yang Yuanwai is indispensable to Chen Xian, and Chen Xian is just a windfall for Yang Yuanwai, according to the degree of importance, Yang Yuanwai should take the lion's share, so Chen Xian even felt that the price given by Yang Yuanwai was very reasonable, and there were no complaints.

Seeing that Chen Xian agreed to the price he proposed without hesitation, Yang Yuanwai was a little surprised, he thought that the other party would bargain with him.

Seeing that Chen Xian was so sensible, Yang Yuanwai was also very satisfied, and instructed the housekeeper to take Chen Xian to the account room to settle the account.

Along the way, Steward Yang and Chen Xian chatted enthusiastically, and Chen Xian took the initiative to hint at the other party without waiting for the other party to ask, and only needed to give himself eight times.

Seeing that Chen Xian was as knowledgeable and knowledgeable as before, Steward Yang was obviously very satisfied.

And the result that Steward Yang was satisfied with was that Chen Xian got the high-grade copper coins of Huang Cheng Chengcheng......

A few days later, Steward Yang sent a few fourteen or fifteen-year-old teenagers to Chen Xian's blacksmith shop as apprentices.

Chen Xian was not surprised by this result, although Chen Xian was confident that his craftsmanship would not be stolen, but for the Yang family, it was not bad to be able to steal some of it.

The Yang family also has its own blacksmith shop, which is built in the military village where the Yang family trains Zhuang Ding, and the weapons and armor used by the Yang family Zhuang Ding are all produced in this shop.

After receiving the apprentices that Yang Yuan had given him, Chen Xian simply recruited a few more, making up enough for thirty-three.

Chen Xian re-broke up the apprentice formation, a team of eleven people, divided into three teams.

After the number of people increased, the two of them cooked, but some of them couldn't come, so Chen Xian recruited two more women from the apprentice's family to cook.

Taking advantage of this expansion opportunity, Chen Xian set up the rules in the shop, and he chose two of the best in mathematics from the old apprentices, one as an accountant and the other as a cashier.

He also selected four people from the old apprentices to be responsible for purchasing vegetables, meat, grain, and various raw materials needed in the shop.

He also selected a few of the more old-fashioned ones from among the old apprentices to serve as quality inspectors, and they were responsible for inspecting the quantity and quality of the goods purchased.

Chen Xian stipulated that the purchaser went out to purchase and did not pay cash, and Chen Xian originally planned to take the method of credit and settle it in January, but because he was an outsider after all and lacked credit, all stores were unwilling to give him credit.

Helpless, Chen Xian can only adopt the prepayment system, first deposit a sum of money on the cabinet of each store, when the purchaser purchases, the two sides write the bills, the store transfers, the purchaser brings back the bills, the accountant establishes the account book, and the cashier settles at the end of the month.

In this process, several parties supervise each other, and the money does not pass through the hands of the purchaser, and it is difficult for anyone to get up and down.

Such a financial system, in modern terms, is very ordinary, and any small shop understands it, but in the eyes of people in this era, it feels that the rules are profound and breathtaking.

After expanding the scale of apprenticeships, Chen Xian added the stoves in the workshop, and he changed the front hall of the courtyard that was originally reserved for the shop into a workshop, and added several stoves here.

Chen Xian also divided the apprentices, two teams specialized in forging knives, and one team followed Zhang Bai and Zhang Song to learn carpenter's trades.

The team specializing in forging knives is also divided into forging preparation, forging and molding, and grinders.

After more than a month of practice, Chen Xian asked the apprentices to start practicing how to build katanas.

In the process of training the apprentices, Chen Xian carefully handed over each step of forging the katana to different groups of apprentices, and he even specified to the apprentices how long it should be calcined in the fire and how many hammers it would take to temper and forge in the process of folding and forging pig iron.

Of course, the final quenching process is still completed by Chen Xian alone.

With Chen Xian's teaching, the apprentices' skills improved extremely quickly, and after just two months, the katana forged by the apprentices was barely qualified.

But Chen Xianwei did not tell the apprentices that the steel they refined was not filled with steel, but pig iron.

If someone steals Chen Xian's technology and uses steel filling to make it according to this set of processes, the decarburization will be overdone, and in the end you can only get a wrought iron bar as soft as noodles.

In the first three months, the apprentices had no output, Chen Xian could only produce less than two katana swords a month, and a dozen yuan was not enough to maintain such a large stall.

The quality of the Kaishan knife made of modern materials, modern technology, and cold forging is much stronger than the Japanese samurai sword forged by Chen Xian's two knives.

This knife gave him another thirty taels of reward (and five taels of silver, which fell into the pocket of Steward Yang).

With these thirty times, Chen Xian survived the first three months.

After the apprentice began to produce, Chen Xian selected qualified knife blanks from the apprentice's works and personally quenched them, and during the quenching process, some internal defects and defects were eliminated, and the final product qualification rate was not too high.

After Chen Xian showed the finished katana forged by his apprentices to Yang Yuanwai, he promised to buy the katana made by these apprentices at a price of five times.

This price is a bit low, but compared to the cost of these katanas, this price is already several times more profitable.

The material cost of a katana is only more than 100 yuan, and the apprentices do not need to be paid, and they can be called cheap, even if the success rate is not very high, the output of these apprentices, in addition to maintaining the daily expenses of the blacksmith shop, Chen Xian can also leave nearly half of the profits.

In this way, Chen Xian was finally freed from heavy labor.

In these three months, in addition to training the apprentices into barely qualified knife craftsmen, Chen Xian's brainwashing plan has also begun to bear fruit.

In just three months, the mental outlook of these apprentices has been completely different from when they first arrived, and Chen Xian can clearly feel that these teenagers, who are in the strongest stage of learning ability in their lives, have begun to think about problems with his familiar way of thinking.

Although the teenagers have changed a lot, Chen Xian is not satisfied with his teaching, because of the lack of teaching materials and outlines, his teaching is often rambling, thinking of what to say, very scattered, so, when freed from heavy manual labor, Chen Xian began to compile teaching materials.