The other day I was called upon to duplicate an architectural turning. A co-worker brought in a spindle from his staircase that his kids had broken while playing. The store that it has been bought from had discontinued it so it now needed to be either copied or repaired.
Since the bed on my lathe is too short to turn it as one piece my suggestion was to cut out the turned piece in the middle and make a duplicate on the lathe that could then be reattached to the two ends. When I got it home I took it to the bandsaw and cut out that section then used it as a template to make a new piece. When I was able to get a good look at the cleanly cut end grain I realized that it was probably oak, which I didn’t have on hand, but since it was going to be painted anyway and went ahead and used the maple that I did have. For being hand turned I thought the copied section turned out rather well.
The two tenons on the ends of the new piece were so that I could glue it into holes that I drilled into the two end sections. Here is the assembled piece. Since it was a freebie job for a friend I figure he can finish of the painting himself.
