Alt Bike Culture - Homemade unicycle wheel?

Has anybody made a unicycle style wheel somehow? I am building an adult sized big wheel and short of buying a unicycle hub/wheel I'm not sure how to make it work. I have a large kids trike with a big pneumatic tire in the front and I was thinking of welding the entire wheel inside a 26" rim somehow, does anyone think that would actually work?

How about drilling spoke holes into the trike wheel and then lacing it to a 26" rim? I think the would give better results than welding it.
But unicycle hubs are not that expensive either: http://www.unicycle.com/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=144

it is easier for a rich man to enter heaven than it is to make your own unicycle wheel

I've contemplated cutting a BB shell and spindle in half, then attaching them to hub somehow. The fork would then be welded to the BB shell and the cranks would just attach to the spindle. It would probably have huge Q factor, but whatever.

The web is full of frustrating tales of trying to drill through axles. I don't know anyone who's done it. Unicycles have weird two-piece forks. Maybe find a high-end kid's trike with cotter cranks?

Unicycles have weird two-piece forks. The fork ends hold the outer ring of the bearings of the hub.

I had been thinking about making a unicycle hub. I think the easiest (and it's not easy) way would be to take a steel BMX hub (BMX, because it has larger axle diameters), immobilize the bearings (e.g. weld them in place), somehow attach bearings on the axle (hold them in place by e.g. nuts or machined bearing holders) and then attach cottered cranks to the axle.

But that is so much work, I don't think it's worth it...