Let me try to explain this. I saw a picture of a much smaller one he had made.
He took two sheets of 3/4" plywood 6' X 3' and epoxied them together. Then he took mesquite cut into 2" X 2" X 6' long pieces and laid them side by side till they were 3" wide. He did not glue them. He then took the plywood and placed it over the mesquite and bolted through the plywood into the mesquite strips. He easily used a hundred lag bolts to do this. He did not put any bolts in a 3' diameter circle in the middle. This way he wouldn't hit any of them when he turned it.
He bolted the whole thing to a large face plate and mounted it on the lathe. His plan was to turn concentric circles to a diameter of 2' 9".
It was going to look like an archery target with alternating humps and valleys.
After it was turned, he would remove all the lag bolts. He would then have 18 strips that he would glue together. He would glue them together in alternating heights. One high, one low, one high, one low, all the way across with height differences of maybe 6" to 1'.
It actually looked pretty cool. He had one for sale that was only 3' tall for $1500 in an art gallery and someone special ordered a big one. That was what he was attempting to do when I filmed it.
I have no idea how it turned out.
Did any of that make sense?
Zulu