This is the first of many pieces of tooling that I'll be making for this project. I made this aluminum spud that will go into the end of the wooden block or base, to help me turn it on the lathe. The smaller end is 3/4" diameter and the larger one is about one inch.
 

Here is what the spud looks like inside the base. And you can also see I've laid out a six inch circle for reference. Now it's almost ready to cut on the lathe but first I'm going to remove those four corners to make it easier to turn.
 

I'm going to use my bandsaw to remove those corners so I set my table to 45 degrees. But to make sure I cut in a straight line, I've clamped a piece of square tubing to my table (arrows). This will keep my work piece from moving while I push the block through the blade.
 

I've installed my 4 jaw chuck to hold my large work piece, which is working out great so far. What I need to do is drill a hole that goes all the way through so I can run electrical wire from the bottom to the top. Here I'm using a 1/2" diameter drill to go about 1/4 of the way through. I turned my work piece around and did the same thing on the other end. However, I want to end up with a one inch hole once I'm finished, but I'll get to that later. Now it's time to start turning the outside diameter.
 

Here you can see I'm using my aluminum spud along with my live center to support my work piece while I'm turning it. This worked out really well. If you look close you can see my lathe is running and taking a cut when I took this picture.
 

My work piece is still oversize at this point but I decided to cut off about 1 1/2" to get rid of that cracked area. Now if you look close you can also see a pencil line near the end of the part. This line represents the overall length of my work piece so I still have plenty to work with.