I have a shop full of the big stationary Delta woodworking machines that I bought about 22 years ago, so when the woodturning bug bit me ten+ years ago I bought the Delta 1440 Variable speed lathe because of their good name and favorable reviews in woodworking magazines. Since I was a Delta fan-boy back then, I maintained a positive attitude and the Delta support was still great despite the fact that some of their newer machines were not something worth writing home about.
The Reeves pulleys may have been aluminum twenty years ago, but in 2004, they were die-cast zinc. Die-cast zinc is very common on fixed pulleys used with smaller motors, mainly one horsepower and smaller. But, the side loads on a Reeves pulley are much greater -- too great to make it suitable for that sort of application. I have a feeling that until about 15 to 20 years ago, home workshop lathes were primarily used for light duty spindle turning and the manufacturers in Taiwan (where the machines were designed and built and then badged to Delta, Jet, etc.) weren't exactly aware of the changes taking place where the lathes were being used to turn larger diameter decorative and functional objects. The die-cast zinc pulleys might have been marginally adequate for the average woodworker who occasionally needed to turn some table or chair legs where the torque requirement is minimal. When it comes to larger things, they weren't so great.
I estimate that I spent five hours working on the lathe for every hour that I spent turning. And, sometimes the down time was nearly two month while waiting on a slow boat from China to deliver replacement parts. The good news is that Delta support was eager to help and sent me all of the repair parts that I needed and would recommend additional parts, almost enough to build another lathe. They even said that they would be very willing to fully refund my purchase price at any time. Things gradually started changing after Pentair sold them to Black & Decker and the repair parts was transferred to Service Net. When Stanley Works acquired B&D, service just became a word that sounds nice. When Stanley Black & Decker sold them to a start-up company, Delta just became a word that sounds nice.
Back to the lathe, everything except for the wimpy drive train was not too bad, in fact, actually fairly decent. I was convinced that I could make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but the weak link was the die-cast zinc pulleys and there was no getting around that. So, being an engineer without a bean-counting boss to tell me that I am wasting time and money, I set about designing a new drive train using a Baldor industrial motor designed for true vector drive use along with a Baldor industrial vector inverter. The combination of the two could be set for any speed from zero to 6,000 RPM, although I couldn't imagine spinning anything that fast without installing at least twelve inches of armor around it.
I never did finish the project because the cost kept going higher and higher and suddenly a new kid on the block showed up at SWAT. Some guy named Brent had this funny looking black and gray lathe (funny looking only because it was new and different from the usual look that woodturners were accustomed to seeing) with adjustable legs, stainless steel ways and a 25 inch swing. After mulling it over (for a few years) and getting tired of limping along with a half broken down lathe and a nice, but too small Jet mini, I overcame my frugality and bought one of those no-longer-funny-looking beauties. My only regret now is that I didn't buy one sooner. I really don't know why, but I occasionally think about finishing my Franken-delta conversion just because it would be fun to have a hot-rodded turbo-supercharged old clunker lathe with decal flames coming out the headstock.
