Nice looking bike! Yours too, Citoyen du Monde, but the pic doesn't come through enough for me to see it clearly. I will certainly consider the front-drive arrangement.

In the meantime I went over to Harris and rummaged through a few boxes of spindles, found a bunch of longer ones but with slightly different bearing spacing. And a few shorter ones too. For $5 it was a safe bet, and seems to have worked out okay. The chainrings moved a bit further out than optimal but certainly workable. This initial build-up is a feasibility experiment anyway before I deal with some aesthetics questions (like decent paint). So I can re-evaluate the drivetrain then.

Thanks for the suggestion!