thawkins87-
Thanks for the nice comment....but full truth be known this is my second try at this. As I mentioned I modeled this after their letter jackets, the orange sleeves, black torso and the stripes on the shoulders, except their jackets actually had two white and black stripes. I used black and white edging for melamine, which is in rolls and as it turns out is not a consistent width, so it got "wonkey" and thus it made my "box of failures". (When I get thinking I really got this figured out, I look in there)
I might do it different than some here, but I got the ideas from here....I drill all segments, I leave the outside segs long, and put it together on a longer tube, but just slightly shorter than my total length of all my segs, so I can clamp the ends...then I sand to the appropriate length on my disc sander. The tube keeps it in register.
If I have a length wise segment, I try and put it in the middle section and I support it while drilling in a square collect chuck on my metal lathe after I have sanded it to 3/4 square. Prior to having the square collet I just used a Penn State drilling chuck.
Once you get it drilled it is pretty stable on a mandrel if you have used ample glue. I have turned between centers but I like the extra stability that bushings provide.
Someone on the site told me once that they periodically flood the outside of the blank with thin CA, so it would go down inside the blank and support it too. I have done that with some success too.
Just some suggestions, there are certainly many ways of doing it.