Honestly, I bought this lathe because someone gave me a piece of ironwood and I wanted to make something cool out of it. I've been doing that (knife handle) and also started making cool stuff out of a bunch of other materials including teak and oak. no problem on my normal plywood workbench. Start at slow speeds and then increase the speed until you get the effect you want with your tools, but it's easy to use and I've had really good results with no instability or issues.