It has been almost 2 weeks since my last post. I was able to put the main taper on the posts last Saturday and build the jig to do the octagonal tapers. I still need to cut the actual octagonal tapers. 
Cutting the main taper on all 4 sides of each post was a bit of a challenge requiring some careful work. I was a bit nervous to cut the tapers freehand so I built a jig that presented the posts to the bandsaw blade at the correct angle. Not sure if I wound up saving any time doing it that way but at least my cuts were quasily consistent.
I rough cut each face, then planed any major high spots off with the hand plane and finished the face with the jointer to ensure that I cut them square. To prevent the posts from moving while I planed I simply clamped a piece of 2x2 oak to the end of the assembly table and butted the post end against it while planing. I really liked how nicely the jack plane was cutting the cherry. It did a much nicer job then the jointer. Part of that was probably the akewardness of jointing a tapered face and the fact that I probably should either hone the blades or put in a freshly sharpened set. 
It took a few hours but eventually we got all 16 faces tapered. At the end of the day it felt good to be able to take all the posts and place them next to each other and see that all the tapers were extremely close to being an exact match. All told it probably took me 8 hours to get the tapers all cut and to make two jigs. The jig to cut the remaining 4 tapers to complete the octagon on each post is not shown.
It may well be another week or two before I can do much more on it. I'm going to need to put in a ton of overtime at work for the next couple of weeks. Which is part of the reason it took so long to upload these images as well.
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