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(The third watch is coming, check the brethren!) ）

After Xiao Tianjian dealt with some miscellaneous matters, he concentrated on the design of the drilling machine and the waterwheel, but the waterwheel was not too anxious, so he concentrated his energy and began to design the drilling machine for the drill.

In this era, in addition to hydropower, only animal power and manpower can be used, and the drilling machine must not be the same as the drilling machine of later generations.

Therefore, the design of this kind of drilling machine will be a bit troublesome, which involves carpenters and blacksmiths to cooperate with his design.

After careful consideration, he finally decided to design this drilling machine by manpower, and it could only be designed as a horizontal drilling machine.

To this end, he drew a set of drawings, recruited a few carpenters, and first made a small model of a drilling machine according to his drawings.

The drilling machine is actually not too difficult, but it is not very easy to do in practice, that is, through the promotion of manpower, with the help of gear transmission, the drill bit rotates at high speed, and the built gun pipe is stuck at the other end of the drilling machine, the drill bit rotates, through a chute, slowly moves towards the gun pipe, and gradually probes into the gun pipe, and drills into it little by little, which requires the drill bit to shake very little, otherwise the gun pipe will be scrapped by drilling.

The model was quickly made under the busy work of several craftsmen, Xiao Tianjian personally commanded them, and conducted some experiments, but the results were not ideal, the error was still too large, and the operation was not labor-saving.

After Xiao Tianjian experimented, he smashed the model on the spot in a fit of rage, overturned the original design, and after summarizing the reasons for the failure, he made a new design, and then handed it over to the craftsmen to make the model again and test it again.

So repeated three times, the third time to make the model to meet Xiao Tianjian's requirements, the craftsmen around this drilling machine, can not help but sigh amazed, although they have heard of Xiao Tianjian understand a lot, but did not expect Xiao Tianjian to do this kind of thing, the design of this kind of manpower drilling machine, so that the efficiency of the drill chamber increased more than ten times, and this kind of drilling machine, only two people to operate, very stable, so these craftsmen to Xiao Tianjian to help this is completely convinced.

After passing the test, Xiao Tianjian was finally much more satisfied, standing in front of this model, he smiled, and after trying to operate it himself, he clapped his hands and said: "It's not easy!" Hehe! Thank you! It seems that this time it should be no problem! Next, you will enlarge the size according to this model, make a frame, and send it to the iron work, so that Yang Changshou can try it out and see if there are any problems! It's a pity that there are no ball bearings yet, once there are ball bearings, the efficiency of this drilling machine will be improved a lot! That's all we can do now! ”

Several craftsmen hurriedly nodded in agreement, did not dare to slack off, and immediately began to prepare materials, enlarge according to this model, and began to manufacture the formed drilling machine.

Xiao Tianjian couldn't get his hands on, so he turned to design his new waterwheel, the original wheeled waterwheel is not enough to use the power of the water flow, so what he wants to get is similar to the kind of water wheel generator in later generations, the water flows through the water wheel blades through the pipe, so that it rotates to generate power, so that you can make more effective use of the power generated by the water flow, this thing has long appeared in ancient times, but the application is mostly in the south, and it is not popular enough, Xiao Tianjian is definitely not an invention, but the use of the knowledge of later generations, It only took a day to draw a rough structural drawing, as for the detailed design, he didn't have to care, after all, these details of the design, completely let the craftsmen themselves use their imagination to improve, sometimes just to provide them with an idea.

And this picture was quickly sent to the craftsmen responsible for manufacturing the waterwheel, these craftsmen after reading it, felt that it was not difficult, so they began to explore their own experiments, the first waterwheel is not ready to use, only after the second dam is completed, and then put into use experimentally, this requires a process, it also takes a certain amount of time to complete, Xiao Tianjian even if he is in a hurry, he can only wait.

And taking advantage of his spare time, Xiao Tianjian went to Gao Cheng in the back mountain to inspect it, where there are piles of collected soil nitrate, and Gao Cheng took a group of subordinates, busy with the heat, boiling these soil nitrate into fire nitrate, and now it has boiled out hundreds of catties of fire nitrate, just to be configured with sulfur and charcoal into gunpowder.

After Xiao Tianjian took a look, he also had an intuitive understanding of Gao Cheng's nitrate boiling method, Gao Cheng's nitrate boiling method is actually very mature, and there is no room for him to interject, and Gao Cheng is very practical and serious, and the nitrate boiling process is also very strict, and the nitrate can only be counted as a finished product after two filtration and boiling, so the nitrate made is already very pure, so that once it is prepared into gunpowder in strict proportions, the power is fully guaranteed.

But Gao Cheng also encountered some problems, the key is when crushing saltpeter, and when configuring gunpowder, the problem of tools.

Because when crushing saltpeter and preparing gunpowder, there can be no sparks, once made with iron or stone tools, it is easy to produce sparks, and a little spark will cause a big explosion for them, at least a fire, for here, it is definitely a disaster.

Therefore, the tools used should be preferably made of silver, so as to avoid sparks and reduce the risk of explosions.

After Xiao Tianjian asked about the situation, he did not hesitate to order to take three thousand taels of silver from Lotus Village, melt them directly, and cast them into the tools needed by Gao Cheng for Gao Cheng and other craftsmen to use.

Gao Cheng didn't expect Xiao Tianjian to be so generous, and he was willing to take out so much silver for them to use, so he became even more motivated, according to him, as long as the sulfur kept up, and the earth nitrate could keep up in the future, then they would not worry about running out of gunpowder in the future.

And Xiao Tianjian also exchanged with him about the production method of granular gunpowder, and Gao Cheng also humbly adopted Xiao Tianjian's suggestion, switched to glutinous rice juice, and finally made the granular gunpowder they needed through spraying, sifting, drying and other processes.

In this way, the problem of gunpowder is basically solved, as long as the Fan family transports sulfur, then even if they can't buy saltpeter in the future, there will be no threat of gunpowder interruption in the army! Moreover, the quality of gunpowder can be ensured, and the power of firearms in the Xingtian Army will be further enhanced.

This is the benefit of having a base, the original problem that they can only solve by plundering can basically be solved by self-reliance, and the quality of the various weapons produced has improved by leaps and bounds compared with before, and the most important thing is that they have initially begun to transform towards unified equipment, which has played a very key role in the improvement of the combat effectiveness of the Xingtian Army.