Quick Variations with PhotoShop (tm)
 

Sketches, drawings and CAD drawings are ok for working
out a turned outline - but a) can take a fair bit of time
and b) don't look 3-D - with shading (unless you have
a CAD app that will do that and your computer renders
the results quick enough. But if you have a digital camera
or a scanner and a graphics program like Adobe PhotoShop
(tm) which will let you stretch an image, you can do
photo quality variations of a piece and converge on
what you think looks right pretty quickly.

http://home.comcast.net/~charliebcz/.../Turning8.html

Just a suggestion.

charlie b