One can throw stone into the block bench and cut it into shapes in a variety of stone types and patterns. That's very cool. Something that would also be very cool would be to be able to throw stone into the block bench and not cut it into any shape but rather just change the type and color. Turn it into say white marble, and then get it back in inventory and then it could be 'poured out' and then sculpted with the pickaxe and hammer as usual.
Alternatively, the addition of a small chisel and a small mallet (animations could be the mallet hammering the chisel, and then the mallet could be used single handed for any smoothing), so that a block of pile of blocks could be sculpted, rather than the current behavior of shattering whole blocks.
