An early case example that people frequently experience is with troll hide armour; It can be crafted and upgraded quite a ways once you get deep into the bronze age, however, you cannot get it to to lvl 4 until you get a lvl 5 workbench for the trollhide.

Annoyingly, the last upgrade you need for the workbench by this point requires both Iron AND obsidian, so you're liable to have lvl 4 iron armour before lvl 4 trollhide.