Zhang Chu settled Yue Yue in the county government to rest, and brought those craftsmen from Sichuan to the west of Yanchang County. In the past two days, the craftsmen have not been idle, and have purchased a large number of well-drilling materials in the county.

Zhang Chu carefully observed the surrounding scenery and then pointed out the location of the well. The craftsmen were a little puzzled, and finally couldn't help but explain to Zhang Chu that no matter how you look at this place, it shouldn't be the location of the salt well, and it is likely that you will find nothing after fighting for a long time.

Zhang Chu was unmoved, he was still confident in the chosen location, when he ran around with the tour group, he was fooled by the tour guide to see only a low derrick, and the tourists were still here for a long time. Compared with the characteristics of the surrounding mountains and rivers, the location will not be wrong.

This place is famous in later generations, it is the location of the earliest oil production well in Chinese mainland, and in 1905 it began to drill oil here, and the well was only 81 meters deep to obtain industrial oil flow. Therefore, Zhang Chu believes that with the skills of these salt workers, it will not be a problem to produce oil.

Zhang Chu said to everyone: "I am not drilling a salt well, I am drilling an oil well, this oil will be more expensive than brine in the future, so there is no problem to drill down to a depth of thirty zhang, right?" ”

Everyone said that there is no problem, this is also the truth, they have drilled hundreds of zhang deep wells before, as long as there are wages and materials, it is not a problem to drill a well thirty zhang deep at all, but Zhang Chu can see that there is oil below, and said that this oil will be more expensive than brine There are really few people who believe it, but the wages are from him, the location is chosen by him, and the craftsmen just need to dig the wells well.

Zhang Chu ordered the project to start.

The workers first dug up the floating mud from the ground, and dug a large pit like digging a well. Before digging deep, the mud layer reached the bottom, and there were stones underneath. The masonry went down to the bottom of the pit and continued to dig.

The leading craftsman saw that Zhang Chu was standing next to him and watched that he had no intention of leaving, so he came over to introduce the situation to him.

The well will not be dug like this, and when it is about three feet long, it must be built up with stone circles one by one to block the surrounding soil and rocks that are not very strong.

Then the large plate is framed at the side of the wellhead. The workers pushed the crank back and forth, and the drill bit hung on the piece rope was lifted and put away, and the drill bit was chiseled down again and again. Chisel all the way to the desired depth.

There are professional personnel to operate Zhang Chu is relieved, the oil well needs a long time, Zhang Chu arranged to return to the county office. When he saw Zhu Xiucai, he asked him to arrange special personnel to manage the construction of oil wells. At the same time, the workshop was ordered to produce new oil refining equipment, which was matched with the oil wells.

It is not easy to come to Yanchang County, Zhang Chu decided to take a look at the situation, especially the production situation of some workshops, a large number of craftsmen were transferred away after Zhang Chu laid Zhongyang, and the remaining craftsmen with new people are still working hard, providing a steady stream of materials for the security army, and also feeding a large number of homeless victims.

The production situation of the workshops everywhere made Zhang Chu very satisfied. But when he walked to the textile workshop, he was stopped by two sturdy women, who obviously had a lot of opinions about Zhang Chu taking people to stick their heads everywhere to watch, and came over and shouted: "Look at what to see, don't look at it here." ”

"Why don't you look at it, this is my territory." Zhang Chu laughed.

"This is the Security Army Textile Factory, don't mess around here." The two women were serious.

Zhang Chu is not good at joking anymore, if it is spread that it is not good for the marshal of the security army to molest the female workers of the textile factory, he has to give a gift and say: "Two sisters-in-law, we are also members of the security army and have something to do in the factory, please inform the person in charge of your factory." ”

The woman asked Zhang Chu to wait outside the door to call someone, and after a while, the director of the textile factory came, but he also knew Zhang Chu, and it turned out that he was the eldest daughter-in-law of Li Deliang, a craftsman invited by Zhang Chu in Jiangnan. The factory director hurriedly let Zhang Chu into the factory, and introduced as he walked that the factory is now mainly female workers, so it has implemented closed management, and outsiders are not allowed to enter. Zhang Chu felt that this was also very good, in line with the habits of the Ming Dynasty, so that more families could let women come out to work.

When he came to the workshop, the factory director introduced Zhang Chu to the spinning machine that Zhang Chu was most concerned about. Li Deliang and his son were inspired by Zhang Chu to make a new spinning machine, but there were many problems at the beginning, several spinning machines were scrapped, and a new spinning machine that could be used was made under continuous experiments, and then they began to try to produce, and the loom had many failures in production, and Li Deliang and his son had to be in the workshop every day, and the problem was found at any time to repair at any time. Only then did I gradually grasp the characteristics of the spinning machine. Then a new loom was made. The spinning machine that Zhang Chu sees now is the latest machine, and it can finally work stably.

Now there are more than 50 female workers in the textile factory, most of whom are recruited from the homeless people, who are homeless and live in the factory. The factory has woven several batches of finished fabrics, and the quality is very good. Except for a small amount given to Zhou Jialin to sell to try the market, the rest were supplied to the security army.

The main difficulty now is that there is too little cotton, and although Zhou Jialin's commercial bank has shipped two more batches of cotton, if it wants to expand the scale of the factory and recruit more workers, it has to invest more money to purchase cotton.

Zhang Chu decided to let the workers work hard to master the techniques of spinning and weaving first, and then bring in new workers when they were proficient.

When they came to Li Deliang's workshop not far away, Li Deliang and his son were repairing the loom, and when they saw Zhang Chu, they hurriedly saluted. Their family moved north to Yanchang like a gamble, and the bet was right. Now the whole family is working, and the wages they earn have increased dramatically. And because of Zhang Chu's attitude towards craftsmen, the security army respected them very much, and craftsmen were finally no longer cheap. Now the family is not rich, but life is full and happy.

After greeting each other, the conversation came back to the loom. Seeing the initial success of the spinning machine, Zhang Chu decided to take another step forward, and only in this way could he turn from a small textile workshop into a factory.

Zhang Chu wants to use water power to drive the loom, and now the water turbine security army has been used in many places, and the next thing is how to combine the two. This requires a lot of experimentation, and you can only explore it slowly.

There is another technology that now has the conditions for a breakthrough, and that is the shuttle. The shuttle is actually a shuttle installed in the chute with a small wheel, and the two ends of the chute are equipped with springs, so that the shuttle can travel back and forth very quickly, the structure is very simple, but the effect is great. The function of the shuttle is to greatly widen the weaving surface. In the past, with ordinary shuttles, two people had to cooperate, but now with shuttles, one person can complete the weaving work, and can weave wider cloth than before. The shuttle makes the weaving speed faster, which can greatly improve the weaving efficiency. The reason why the practical shuttle can not be built in the past, the problem lies in the spring, due to the lack of elasticity of the spring, the shuttle can not run, and now Deng Qingnian has smelted new steel, the spring problem can be completely solved, and the loom can fly together with the spinning machine.

Zhang Chu and Li Deliang and their son studied for a long time, and finally felt that both improvement plans were feasible. So Zhang Chu ordered the textile factory to be divided into two, Li Deliang and his two sons and most of the factory's workers crossed the Yellow River to Daning to build a new factory, Li Deliang's eldest son and his wife stayed in the original factory, recruiting new people to continue production.

Daning County is rich in water conservancy and coal resources, which is more conducive to production and more secure in terms of safety, and can provide a shelter for disaster victims.

After everything was arranged, Zhang Chu could finally take Yue Yue back to Zhongyang, and there were many things that needed to be handled urgently.