Of course, the use of the steam engine was not limited to steelmaking.

By connecting various cutting devices to the steam engine, the wood can be easily divided into specified sizes by the power of machinery, making charcoal much easier, and the cost of charcoal is much lower.

Without a steam engine, workers would have to do this kind of cutting by hand with saws, knives, and axes, which would have been laborious, time-consuming, and costly.

Connecting a steam engine to a variety of machine tools can greatly improve the efficiency of the machine.

For example, drilling the chamber of a gun used to require an experienced worker to operate the machine, and then two able-bodied workers turned a huge iron wheel behind the machine to provide the tool with the power to cut forward.

Although it can also be designed to be powered by cattle and horses, it is always very inconvenient, and it is easy to affect the accuracy, and the machine tool can be driven by a steam engine, which can naturally multiply the efficiency of the machine tool.

Li Xian had bought a large number of Western technical books before, and his accumulation in mechanics was quite sufficient, but there was no good enough power source, which limited all kinds of production, and with the charcoal-driven steam engine, it was natural to change the situation to a great extent.

Under the work of the workers of the Fukuchi Research Institute, new steam engines were constantly built, and then put into various productions in order to produce cheaper and better steam engines faster, and then continued to promote the development of military industry and heavy industry.

Driven by the steam engine, the imitation of various European machine tools was also put on the agenda.

Before, Li Xian also wanted to imitate various machine tools, but the lack of tools and special steel, and the processing efficiency was too low, so it was done very slowly.

Today, with the help of the steam engine, the production speed of tool steel has almost quadrupled, but the production cost has been reduced one after another, and the efficiency of the machine tool has been continuously improved, so that the machine tool can be imitated in the true sense of the word.

In fact, the imitation of the machine tool is not difficult, first use the machine tool with poor precision to produce the parts with higher precision, assemble the machine tool with better accuracy, and then continue to improve on this basis, until the production of the machine tool with performance far beyond the first product, it is nothing more than the consumption of a lot of tool steel and special steel.

Many workers refining the Dao Seed greatly improve the sensitivity of their five senses and six senses according to the ability of the Dao Seed itself, and can also improve the ability to control their muscles, and can also use the innate true qi to assist in the control of the size when using the machine tool, and their processing ability is close to that of the best master craftsmen.

Normally, a worker who frequently uses machine tools for more than three years can become a skilled worker, and then after ten or twenty years of continuous practice, less than one percent of them can be crowned with the title of master, in today's European countries, or until hundreds of years later, are the top talents, is the pillar of the machining industry.

And now, it is inconceivable that the workers of the Refining Dao Seed can reach a level close to the master level within a year, and they can also appear in batches.

Moreover, with Li Xian's stinginess, the wages of these workers were only one or two times higher than that of ordinary workers, and countless times worse than those of the masters of Europe.

However, considering that the Dao types used by these workers are expensive, and they are all provided by Li Xian, this salary system seems to have its reason.

In the next six months, the industrial base in Fudi has been qualitatively improved, mastering the formula of dozens of special steels, and producing more than 30 tons of high-quality knife steel every month, which has greatly reversed the situation that more than ninety percent of special steel needs to be imported.

Moreover, according to the current situation, there is still a lot of room for improvement in the output of tool steel, and the price can continue to be reduced, and it is possible to reach the level of less than 300 yuan per ton in the near future.

The export price of ordinary steel in the UK is 26 yuan per ton, which seems to be very high at 300 yuan per ton, but this is low enough in the field of tool steel, even compared with various knife steels produced in the UK, there is a certain price competitiveness.

In addition, whether it is a metalworking machine tool or a woodworking machine, the performance has improved a lot compared with before, and more importantly, the production efficiency has increased several times, making it possible to produce more than 10,000 firearms a month.

The total strength of the Huaxia Liberation Army is now 25,000 regular troops plus 25,000 auxiliaries, that is, about 50,000 troops, and maybe about 10,000 troops, producing more than 10,000 guns every month.

In addition, in terms of the production capacity of gunpowder, it also has an annual production capacity of more than 2 million catties of Western-style gunpowder, that is, an annual output of 1,000 tons.

During the Opium War, it is well known that the quality of gunpowder used by the British army was far superior to that of the Qing army, and many people may not know that during the war, the Qing army also carried out various explorations and upgrades of gunpowder production technology, and successfully mastered the production technology of high-quality gunpowder in the West.

Scholars with technical knowledge led by Ding Gongchen conducted field investigations of gunpowder factories in Luzon and other places, learned gunpowder production technology from European magazines such as "Science" and "Nature", improved the formula of gunpowder, and also made the Qing Dynasty capable of producing new gunpowder of no worse quality than the British army by selecting better raw materials and carrying out deep processing.

During the war, Guizhou alone produced more than 200,000 catties of new gunpowder, but unfortunately, under the order of the emperor, this high-quality gunpowder was used in the rear for military training and the like, and was rarely distributed to front-line soldiers.

What is even more regrettable is that after the end of the war, the Daoguang Emperor was worried that this powerful gunpowder would flow into the people and pose a great threat to the rule of the Qing court, so he ordered the production of fire, and removed many of the feudal scholars who had mastered the technology of gunpowder production from their posts and investigated them, and returned to their hometowns to live, and also ordered the local magistrates and other bureaucrats to closely monitor the movements of these gunpowder experts.

Li Xian did not have the production capacity of gunpowder during the period of Leizhou Donghai Island, and would only buy European gunpowder and assemble it, but after absorbing a large number of craftsmen from Macao and Foshan, he gradually overcame various technical difficulties and mastered the production technology of new gunpowder, but the production efficiency was not very high.

Now it can produce all kinds of machinery needed by the gunpowder factory, and with the help of the steam engine, the gunpowder production efficiency and production technology of the military factory under Li Xian are not inferior to the gunpowder processing factories in Luzon and other places, relying on Chinese workers who do not have high salary requirements, there are more advantages in terms of price, the production cost of gunpowder is reduced to less than seven yuan, and the production capacity has also reached an annual output of two million catties, that is, a thousand tons.