When Chen Xu heard the word Shi Lu, he was stunned for a moment. He seemed to have heard of the name somewhere, and felt a little familiar, but he couldn't remember where he had heard of it.

Soon a man in his thirties with a beard and a rattan hat on his head climbed up from the river. He was wearing a thick numb short jacket and shorts, barefoot, and his face was covered in sweat.

"Shi Lu, come and pay homage to Qinghe Hou!" Fang Kuan introduced Chen Xu to the middle-aged man.

The man also looked panicked and kowtowed to Chen Xu directly. Then he said a string of gurgling words. Although he roughly understood, he was extremely awkward and uncomfortable, and he felt that he spoke Mandarin to the Cantonese people, which was very unpleasant.

Chen Xu was stunned for a moment and waved his hand to let Shi Lu get up, stared at him up and down, left and right and said, "Are you not from Central Plains?"

"Marty, Shi Lu is from Yue, and was found by Lord Zhao Qing from Changsha County!" Fang Kuan quickly explained from the side.

Chen Xu was stunned for a moment, then suddenly remembered something, and contacted a character instantly. The doubts in his heart suddenly became clear. He grabbed the man's arm excitedly and said, "So you are Shi Lu!"

Uh! Chen Xu's actions and excited appearance scared Shi Lu very much, and even Fang Kuan was shocked, "Marty, you... do you know Shi Lu?"

"Haha, of course I have heard of it, Shi Lu... Well, I heard that you are proficient in water conservancy, okay, with your help, this dam seems to be fine!"

"Hou...Master Hou praised it, Xiao...Xi Lu must...repair the dam...!"

Shi Lu was a little confused by Chen Xu's praise. He was a craftsman in Changsha County who was in charge of water conservancy. He had never even been to the county town. I wonder how the Marquis knew about him? However, he had long heard that the Marquis of Qinghe was a disciple of the immortal family and must have the ability to be a prophet without hexagrams. Therefore, Shi Lu suppressed his excitement and straightened his tongue and answered stammeringly.

"Well, I will promote you if I repair this dam and I will be the chief water chief in charge of national water conservancy projects!" Chen Xu patted Shi Lu on the shoulder, and immediately made Shi Lu so excited that he couldn't stand firm.

Next, accompanied by Shi Lu and Fang Kuan, Chen Xu went down into the river to carefully inspect the dam under construction, and even climbed onto the huge water truck and carefully inspected the riveted parts. He felt very satisfied.

"Mr. Marquis, now there is plenty of stone and cement. It is not only convenient and much stronger than before using Sanhe soil. Don't worry, it can be completed in at most three or five days..." Fang Kuan said along the way.

"The faster the better. Of course, you must also pay attention to quality and safety. After the construction is completed, you will then dry it for at least half a month before water testing. Be sure to ensure that there will be no accidents this time. Also, has the water mill I drew for you last time started to be made?"

"Water mill...that..." Hu Kuan hesitated for a while while wiping his forehead, and finally said with his head down: "Mr. Marquis, I didn't understand the picture you drew last time. The mutual rotation structure of the gear devices you mentioned was too complicated. I have been busy completing the water truck recently, so I didn't think much about it... Hehe, Marquis, since you are here today, please give me some guidance in person!"

"Let's go and have a look!" Chen Xu did not scold Hu Kuan, but planned to go and see the mill first.

The water truck is close to the river bank and has a diameter of ten meters, which is almost the height of a three-story house in later generations.

In the middle of the waterwheel, a central axis with a diameter of more than ten feet is six feet long. This thick and long giant tree is the main beam of nanmu removed from an abandoned palace. It is very heavy. Although it has been dry for hundreds of years, it is still several tons. It took hundreds of prisoners two days to transport the giant tree to the dam location, and hundreds of people three days to hoist to the production location.

With this giant tree as the spindle, the rest is easy to deal with, because Hu Kuan had built a water truck in the factory before the winter of last year, and the installation of all parts was already clear. Therefore, after the spring, he directly removed the old water truck and installed it step by step on the spindle. It was completed in almost a month, and then used tung oil to brush it several times.

The main shaft of the water truck extends from the shore at about five meters away from the ground, which is thick and long, and looks very fierce and domineering.

A stone wall was built under the spindle, and there was nothing else left empty.

"Mr. Marquis, you see, once the water wheel starts, the spindle rotates vertically, and the iron mill rotates horizontally. You said that you can drive it by biting the gears, but I can't understand the gear diagram you drew." Hu Kuan stood under the spindle and gestured carefully.

"Stupid!" Chen Xu couldn't help rolling his eyes, climbed up the stone wall and stood on the main shaft and looked down a few times, pinched his chin and thought for a while, "You arrange for someone to go to the factory to call Ma Gan and Gongshusheng. By the way, find a few more carpenters!"

"Okay, marquis wait!" Hu Kuan quickly ordered a manager to ride a horse to the factory to find someone.

Taking advantage of this time, Chen Xu stood under the main axis and looked left and right, and slowly he had a rough eyebrow in his heart.

In fact, water wheel drive is very simple. The simplest way to convert the force between vertical rotation and horizontal rotation is to use gears. However, after Chen Xu traveled over, he had never seen any gear structure in Daqin, which means that the principle of gear has not been discovered.

The principle of gears is not complicated, and this kind of gear with huge diameter does not require much precision. It only requires that the two gears can be interlocked with each other. The smaller the number of teeth, the easier it is to achieve, because the larger the error of gear choking can also have a greater fault tolerance. For example, two gears with one meter diameter drive each other. If only four teeth are used, then these teeth are just installed in a direction perpendicular to each other, and there will be almost no error. However, the fewer teeth, the longer the tooth arm is required to ensure that the two gears are interlocked successfully. In this way, the force of the tooth arm will be increased, and the higher the strength of the tooth arm will be required. On the contrary, the more teeth, the more precise the requirements are, the smaller the fault tolerance between the gears will be, the smaller the force of the tooth arm will be, and the more stable the rotation will be. However, if the design is not good, the gear teeth cannot be joined together after the gears rotate, which will inevitably cause damage to the gear teeth or even unable to drive at all.

Gears have a very important position in mechanical engineering and are almost the cornerstone of modern precision industry. Almost all mechanical equipment need to use gears. As the master of gears, the mechanical clocks and watches are all completed by various gears of large and small sizes. It is the most perfect pure mechanical gear structure.

In order to get enough driving force, the diameter of the large water truck was designed for ten meters. Although I don’t know how long it takes to rotate a circle after the water release test, it is estimated to be more than one minute. That is to say, the central shaft in front of me can only rotate one circle at least one minute, and the diameter of the iron mill in the factory is only eight feet, which is larger than the spindle. If wooden or iron teeth are installed on the spindle like this, the large iron mill will take more than one minute to rotate one circle. This speed is definitely not enough. Although it may save effort, the speed of grinding stone is not as fast as that of using a bullock. I guess it will not be much ground in a day. If you want to speed up the rotation speed of the iron mill, you can only make the driving gear bigger...

Watching Chen Xu walk around, sometimes frowning, sometimes stopping to think, and then muttering, Hu Kuan didn't dare to ask, so he could only stand beside him and dare not make a sound.

It seems that this gear is indeed difficult and stumped the omnipotent little marquis.

Twenty minutes later, with the sound of horse hooves coming, Ma Gan Gongshusheng and several craftsmen with factory tags hurriedly followed the manager in.

After greetings, Chen Xu called Hu Kuan and a group of people to the front of the spindle and said, "You can help me install a wooden wheel with a diameter of 16 feet on this spindle. Remember to use the strongest wood, and the riveting should be riveted with angle iron and rivets. Both sides of the wooden wheel should also be swung with iron bars. Sixty round holes with a diameter of 5 inches are made on the wooden wheel at an even distance to embed wooden teeth..."

The group of people didn't know what Chen Xu wanted, so they could only listen obediently. Chen Xu said something, and everyone nodded with him.

With the process of making a large water truck, and the wheels of the carriage are also common, it is not a problem to install a large wooden wheel with a diameter of 16 feet on this shaft. As for the equal distance dividing and drilling holes, it is not a problem. The spokes of the wheel also need to be installed in this way. All carpenters have experience.

"That's it, how long will it take to complete?"

"The factory has many high-quality wood left after making the water truck last time. I'll find more apprentices and helpers. It's estimated that it will take about five days!" said a carpenter.

"The riveted reinforced corner iron and the iron bar factory with the hoop edge will be made soon!" Ma Gan nodded.

"That's good. I'll inform me after the wooden wheel is built. After Gongshusheng returns, he prepares a sand turning mold and a large amount of steel, and prepares to pour another pair of iron mills. However, after the wooden wheel is finished, I have to observe the running status of the gears before determining the number and position of the gears on the iron mills!"

"Don't worry, Master, I'll go back and prepare now!" Gongshusheng quickly agreed.

"Okay, that's what it is here for the time being. The dam and wooden wheel are built faster!"

These things are too anxious, so Chen Xu could only take one step at a time to make this water wheel mill, but according to his idea, there must be no problem.
Chapter completed!