BTW, I think it may have been on "This Old House", not sure, where one of the guys insisted on making spindles for a deck. The other show host tried to convince him it was to much labor and he was crazy, but since he wanted to show case the router turning center received from some company, he went on to do them.
Well after doing the doing the spindles he admitted it was a gratifying but a really dumb idea to do them instead of buying them!
Would guess that the show was over budget on that one!
BUT the above said,
My custom lathe screen can be used to gather locations along a spindle, generate a finished a DFX file for use in LazyTurn, which generates the Gcode very quickly. Don't use it often, but one time I tested how long the complete duplication cycle would take for a "toilet handle" and it took around 20 minutes total time.
FWIW,
RICH