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Looking for input from those mechanical/engineering minds

You don’t need a powered solution at all. Instead, glue a portion of a wide sanding belt to a flat substrate to make a sanding slab, then turn your partial vessel upside-down and move it around by hand. A few swipes will even out high spots quickly.

Tim
 
Think vertical lathe. Build a potters wheel. Small motor to keep weight down, pulleys to step speed down, and a shaft that will accept a chuck.

Or find a cheap used lathe and pull the headstock to create the potters wheel.
 
An actual potter's wheel might work nicely - they are almost always variable speed and should be enough torque. A pro potter friend uses multiple wheels. Might find an inexpensive on on Facebook, etc or from a retiring potter or potter heir. It should be easy to mount any kind of a spindle adapter or even a simple threaded rod to hold the chuck.

The problem with a repurposed potter's wheel might be access to the work since the wheels often have wide, round trays. But with the motor and speed control it should be trivial to adapt it to provide clearance for any sanding need.

JKJ
 
Howdy Jim, An interesting dilemma. I know you said you do not have room for another lathe but what about locating a used small mini lathe and removing the headstock? The headstock could be mounted on a bench or a small platform similar to Paul's great idea above. Rotisserie motors pop into my mind (for assembling a finishing station) but they usually go much slower than the 250 rpm you would like. Best of luck!
 
I would say skip the motor drive and the sandpaper.
Mount a shaft with the 1-1/4" adaptor on bearings and put a large handwheel on the outboard end.
Make a flat bed out of something like MDF add an adjustable stop at 90 degrees to the spindle.
Mount a router on a fixture like is used often used to detail turnings (John Lucas could provide photos).
The cut would not need to be very deep and if not deep enough it should be evident how much more is necessary and not more than about .020".
Your left hand on the handwheel and your right-hand moving the router against the stop guide.
The 2 most important considerations are no runout on the spindle and the 90 degree stop guide.
 
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