Great quality outstanding easel, good price and very sturdy

A little handheld power drill goes a long way if you are assembling this easel on your own.This easel comes with a detailed assembly booklet, labeled wooden parts, labeled hardware and a Philips head screwdriver but *man* does it make you work to put it all together.It was fine when I was just putting the back half of the A-frame together. The holes for the screws are easy to identify and are drilled into the wood fairly well.But the cylinder nuts have iffy machining and 2 were chipped, which made it hard to attach the legs of the back frame.Its when you get to the adjustable mast hinge that the problems begin to arise.There are about 6 holes on the hinge (3 on each side) that have shallow placement holes. If you use the provided Phillips head, you'll really have to lean in and *torque* to attach them to the mast.I'm not light weight, but my wrists just didn't like this task. At one point, the screwdriver started to strip the heads of the bolts when I got 3/4's of the way into the wood.Thankfully, I'll never be dissembling this easel, but this hiccup is a good reason to consider using power tools if you've got 'em.The tray portion of the easel comes pre-assembled, but when I tried to slide it onto the mast during the final step, I discovered it had been put together *backwards*! lolI got lucky, though. I was able to easily undo these screws and put the tray back together correctly.All told, it took me about me about an hour to complete.A lot of that time was down to elbow grease and finagling with the hardware.The instruction booklet is easy to read and understand.I keep a lot of large cotton canvases around my home. The biggest is 30 x 40 inches.These canvases were able to sit in this easel easily, without any wiggling or weakness in the tray.The adjustable knob on the top canvas holder is great and can get tight without the easel creaking or snapping.This easel works best on hard surfaces- wood, tile or vinyl. There are rubber leg tips on the feet of the A-frame that help it stay put when it unfolds.It doesn't list to the side or collapse easily.Very solid.For $100 at the time of acquisition, I feel like its a very good buy for the money and would serve any painter of any skill level very well for the price.4 stars!

Surprised me how tall the sections are but that's okay. This one is a bit lighter than my other wooden easel, but it is oak so that's almost an unfair comparison. I'm the type of artist that quite often I have multiple pieces going at the same time, I don't think I could have too many easels. Neither of my wooden ones stand as solid as my aluminum one does, especially under heavy material like plywood, masonite, etc. but this one will work nice with a drawing board for pastels and such on paper stock. I'll just be glad to get my studio space back in order so I can really get busy again, I already have a W.I.P. to put up on this and get finished up.