Interesting

[Lee Enfield]

We have a small engineering company in our local village - I was hunting around the back of some of the buildings and came across one of the original buildings from the 1600's.

I was talking with the owner who was explaining that the site and buildings was the original 300+ year old blacksmiths forge.
There was a big steel shaft going thu the roof one one building, out and thru the next building.
In one building was the original forge and a 'power hammer' that was driven by a belt driven from a pully-wheel on this shaft.

It is interesting to see 100s of years old technology - not in use but still installed and which could be made to work.

A friend of mine (who recently passed at 89) spoke about setting up belts for machinery - he showed me old catalogues (I'm sure I ended up with some) and IIRC old copies of Machinery's Handbook showed the proper setup of belt drives.

https://www.smokstak.com/forum/threa...e-shop.215434/
Industrial Antiquity - Line Shaft Pulleys and Belting