The weather is slowly getting colder, and there are still two months to go before the New Year, the New Year Festival is the most important festival in Chinese tradition, and it is a day for family celebration.

The peasant uprising in Shaanxi is still continuing, Yang He is still very responsible for the appeasement work, and has appeased a number of rebels, but his appeasement speed has not yet caught up with the increase in the rebel army. Therefore, the situation in Shaanxi has not only not improved, but is also getting worse and worse.

In order to save money, Zhu Cijiong chose to arm the army with a flintlock pistol, and then exterminate the rebels. But the production of this flintlock pistol has encountered problems again, it can't recruit people, and a large military factory that can accommodate at least tens of thousands of people has been built, but it only recruits about 1,000 people, and all of them are white, and they still need to be cultivated from the basics, how can this output go up.

When it comes to this output, Zhu Cijiong has a way, because he was a process engineer in his previous life, and a reasonable process can increase output. Zhu Cijiong thought about it, and the only way to significantly increase output was to increase the types of machine tools.

He still has a lot of machine tools in his mind, it's not that he doesn't want to make them, it's just that the processing level at that time made these machine tools too troublesome.

For example, the structure of the milling machine is not complicated, as long as the drill is erected, and then the drill bit is replaced with a milling cutter, and then a platform for fixing parts is made. Others are not very difficult to do, but this milling cutter is a big problem, the Ming Dynasty this processing level, to make the milling cutter, the difficulty is not ordinary.

The blank of the milling cutter is not very difficult to do, it can be turned out with a lathe before quenching, the key is the cutting edge of the milling cutter, to process a circle of cutting edges on a disc, in the Ming Dynasty without metal cutting equipment, the difficulty can be imagined.

Bi Maokang came up with a way, that is, grinding, the Ming Dynasty did not have metal cutting equipment, but there are still a lot of natural whetstones, anyway, those stonemasons can not participate in military production, it is better to let them use whetstones to slowly sharpen the blade of the milling cutter.

Zhu Cijiong gave him a drawing of the milling cutter, and the cold sweat on his forehead immediately broke out, such a complex blade, a stonemason is afraid that it will take a month to grind a milling cutter!

Of course, Zhu Cijiong will not let people really grind for a month, now this high-carbon steel material, a milling cutter can be used for a few days is good, if you get ten milling machines, then you have to arrange hundreds of people to grind milling cutters, the cost is too high.

The problem of milling cutter processing can be easily solved, you can make a simple grinder, the piston system is ready-made, the whetstone is processed into a disc shape, and then fixed to the rotating shaft. If you use a simple grinder, a skilled worker can grind several milling cutters a day, and the cost is not so high.

Zhu Cijiong found that there are still many processing methods that he doesn't know, but Bi Maokang knows them very well. This is not discussed with them, the problem of the milling cutter is solved, and it can be done with the milling cutter milling machine. Zhu Cijiong asked them to make ten sets in one breath, and basically half of the various strange-shaped parts in the flintlock pistol can be put on the milling machine for processing, and the output of the milling machine can be increased by at least three percent.

There are also some strange-shaped parts that are flaked, and it is not a matter at all to get to modern times, buy a bunch of thin steel plates, directly on the punch, and a person can rush out thousands a day! But the Ming Dynasty did not have a standard thin steel plate, and the punch also needed to be made.

Let's talk about this punch first, even if it is a small part, you have to lift a gravity wheel of several hundred catties, and then rush down with a snap to punch the thin steel plate on the mold into the desired shape. It's okay to say that this mold is no problem to make tens of thousands of parts, just let people grind it out slowly. The key is that this gravity wheel, weighing hundreds of pounds, has to be turned into a wheel, and the small lathe can't afford to toss such a big guy.

There was no way, Zhu Cijiong had to make a large lathe first, and the problem of the punch was basically solved.

With a large lathe, the problem of the thin steel plate has also been solved, the steel plate is nothing more than rolled out with a rolling car, that is, the heated and softened steel block is rolled over from the middle of two huge steel rollers, and the steel block becomes a steel plate.

With a large lathe, this steel roller can naturally be processed, but the diameter can not be too big, too big to make the blank can not be made, fortunately, the amount of this thin steel plate is not large, just make a few half meters wide steel roller. In this way, a rolling mill rolls the steel plate made in one day, and it can't be used up in a month, which is a serious overcapacity.

Zhu Cijiong can't manage so much, there is no ready-made steel plate to buy, so he can only process it himself, this steel plate is nothing to do, it can be used in many places, but now no one knows that there is this good thing to sell, if everyone knows that there is a good steel plate to sell, it is estimated that it will be in short supply soon.

Punch, rolling mill as soon as it is made, the output of the flintlock pistol will be increased by three percent, of course, this is already the limit, other machine tools do not need to do, some parts process is too complicated, I don't know how much time it takes to make it, and it is not much help to make the production of the flintlock pistol, it is just a waste of time.

In this way, it took more than a month, Zhu Cijiong and Bi Maokang discussed that the simple milling machine, grinder, rolling machine and punch were all complete, and more than 1,000 novices could almost get started with the operation, and the New Year was approaching. Zhu Cijiong simply ordered everyone to take a good rest, and officially start producing flintlock pistols after the New Year.

In a blink of an eye, the first year of Chongzheng passed like this, and after the ups and downs of this year, Zhu Cijiong finally realized the hard work of being an emperor, and at the same time strengthened his determination to develop the military industry.

The invasion of the Later Jin Dynasty and the peasant uprising in the northwest made him understand a truth, that is: only with absolute force can there be an absolute right to speak, and why the Later Jin ignored the warnings of the Ming Dynasty and attacked Liaodong again and again, because their current force is stronger than that of the Ming Dynasty. The reason why the peasants in the northwest dared to put down their hoes and revolt was because the Ming Dynasty did not have a surplus army to suppress them.

If there are hundreds of thousands of quasi-modern troops equipped with new flintlock pistols and sufficient artillery, if you let the peasants rebel, they will not dare to rebel, and if you ask Houjin to fight you, they will not dare to attack you, and in the face of advanced gunpowder weapons, the peasants who put down their hoes are the targets that move, and the cavalry of the Houjin is only a target that moves faster. Let them fight with cold weapons and the Ming army equipped with advanced thermal weapons, is it purely to let them come to seek death, who is so stupid!

Of course, these are just Zhu Cijiong's dreams, and the road ahead is difficult, and he doesn't know when this dream will come true.