John Lucas
Joseph Unless it's a very thick piece of wood I would think that you would get huge amounts of chatter and very rough finish.
If you get one of the new carbide lathe tools you can turn spindles quite easily with little skill. The Easywoodtools are great for spindles. The easyrougher and the easy detailer would do what you need to do for spindles and don't take any skill to use. Just a little care and attention to detail and you should be able to use them to make duplicates.