Thanks to everyone for the kind words. It was a fun project.
Tom,
Yes I plan on having the team sign the base. It will also have a small plaque mounted in front of the ball.
Jean Claude,
Welcome to the forum. That site is really cool. I really like his kicking t's. I may rethink my display!!!
Jon,
As far as a tutorial. Man I knew I should have taken pictures as I went. Really it was not very much too it. I found an example of one way to do it where it is glued up hollow. I decided to go ahead and make mine solid.
http://www.woodcentral.com/shots/shot469.shtml
I don't remember the exact dimensions but best I can remember the ball is 5 3/4 at the mid point. Overall it is 11 1/2. Cant remember the distance between the white stripes but lets call it 7inches. That is where I started. I glued up a solid block of kiln dried walnut about 6x6x8 and trimmed the ends square leaving me 7 inches.
I didn't have any maple on hand so I used cypress for the light wood. If I had to do it over I would have went and bought maple because it was hard to transition from the hard walnut to the soft cypress without cutting too deep in the soft wood.
I first made a test ball out of cypress using cedar for the contrasting wood in order to figure out how thick the stripe should start out. On the test ball I glued in a 1/2 inch block. After turning it the stripe was too narrow. I was shooting for 7/8. So...
After the ends were trimmed I glued on a 5/8 thick square of cypress. I used yellow glue here. After it dried I glued on more walnut 3x3 about 3 inches long keeping the grain parallel to the ways. I used 5 min epoxy and the lathe as a clamp.
Then it was just a matter of knocking the corners off on the band saw, mounting it between centers, measuring everything and parting down to the dimensions. I found out the hard way on the test ball to stay away from the stripes with the roughing gouge. Because the grain was running across the ways it blew out the end grain. I started on the ends roughing it down with a bowl gouge and finished it off with the skew. The bowl gouge cut the end grain nice and clean.
The stitches could have been a little better. I actually forgot to do it but I had planned on making the cross stitches stand proud of the main stitch that runs the length of the ball. Anyway I took a 1 inch wide by 3/4 thick stick of cypress and cut the voids on the router table like cutting box joints. Then I sliced off a thin piece on the band saw that would bend to to ball. I glued it on with yellow glue using tape for a clamp.
For a finish I just sanded to 400 and used general finishes outdoor oil and beall buff.