re: Planning and getting started

Yeah, I think 3/4 will look fine if you either bevel the top edge or cut a rabbet around the bottom edge to make it “float” above the table. I’d start with a 45 degree bevel taking off a quarter down and a quarter in and see how that looks. If that looked like too little, I’d turn it from a flat to either a cavetto or a cyma recta. See the page on coving for diagrams. How the shadows play will vary a lot with the profile you pick.