This is a well made piece of equipment and my first TB purchase. I have used it a good deal since receiving it and have a few dislikes about it. First, some of the things I turn and then carve are not bowls and vases and they have a back side that is not used, like wall art. So my normal workflow is using a worm screw, turning the front and then carving. Unfortunately my chuck uses a double ended worm screw and when you have a piece mounted in the chuck using this method you cannot then put the chuck on this carving stand. The reason for this is that the screw post where the chuck mounts is closed, not open like the shaft on your lathe headstock. So the work around is using a tenon instead. The second thing I dislike is that while one handle to lock everything down sounds attractive it is not practical in use. I believe most users will want to position their work where it is comfortable and then rotate the piece incrementally to carve the next section. This is not easily achieved with this carving stand as when you unlock the stand to move the piece there is no way to unlock just the rotation, so the whole top part of the stand (everything above the adjustment handle) just goes with gravity unless you are holding the top portion or your work when you unlock the stand. This means that any repositioning of your piece is a two handed job. For me that means that I have to turn my flex shaft or power carver off and set it down each time I want to move the piece. It would be a much better design to have a separate handle to unlock just the rotation axis so you could move to the next carving section with just one hand and not lose the position of the other axis that you already set for comfort. Hopefully improvements will be made to the product in the future and maybe offer a trade-in discount for the current model.
