I started turning several years ago, back when this group still had lots of regular (even daily) traffic.
My main focus was bowl turning with free (tree cutter) wood. With a Jet 1014, no bandsaw, and extremely poor chainsaw skills (and a wimpy electric chainsaw), I persisted for a while. For reasons I do not quite recall, I also took an immediate aversion to faceplates (probably misunderstanding concepts.)
So the process from off-balance, vaguely log-ish thing, to semi round and ready to start the actual turning was brutal. And it won.
The lathe gathered dust for probably 5 years (maybe even more).
In October, I picked up a bandsaw (Laguna 1412, during the sale), and a couple of weeks ago I finished the garage circuits that it will not trip (previous situation was shop-laughable, current is still, in the terms of my shop teacher, "Harry Homeowner"[1]).
Saturday, after discovering I didn't have enough clamps for both of the panels on another project, I needed something to keep me off the couch. So I dusted off (literally) the lathe, cut a round on the bandsaw in a much more spalted than expected (I found several half-worms) piece of maple, and wet turned a bowl, starting with a faceplate.
The difference between kinda-round on a drive center and nearly round (my bandsaw skills are raw) on a faceplate is amazing. With the former, every (of the many) catch would tear out the drive center seating. With the face plate, the few catches only stalled the lathe with no damage.
Even did a second (green) bowl.
[1] In case anyone almost gets the reference, I grew up in the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. The precurser in those parts to the Big Box Stores was Hechinger's. Their ad cartoon guy was Harry Homeowner. They meant it to be empowering. Even in 1976, Mr. Randolph saw the down side. Opening a paint can with a screwdriver was, to him, a Harry Homeowner thing.