Has anyone ever removed the small chain ring, and turned their triple into a double? If so what all is involved?

Well, you are going to need a double crankset.
You also need to replace the front shifter to double.
The rear derailleur will need to be replaced with a medium or short cage.
New cables.


Edit: You just want to remove the smallest chain ring? Why?

Uh, respectfully, you don't NEED any of the stuff in the post above. you don't need a double crankset because when you remove the granny gear, you will have created a double crankset. You don't need a new rear derailleur because the rear derailleur doesn't know or care if you have a small chainring (some people would replace it for aesthetic reasons, but it will shift fine). You won't need to touch any of the cables, because you're not going to do anything that affects them.
All you have to do is take off the small ring and turn in the low-gear limit screw on the derailleur so you don't shift off the inside (they're little screws that don't seem to do anything; often one is marked L and the other H. If not, stare at the thing and shift back and forth and see what makes it stop moving).
You'll have to pull the crank to get the ring off, which means you'll need a crank puller plus whatever tool removes your crank fastening bolt. A mechanic could do the whole job in about two minutes, but plan on spending some time figuring everything out A torque wrench for reassembly would be nice, but a lot of us rode and wrenched for years without one.
It's a pretty easy job, but I feel compelled to point out that there's no reason to do it. You don't HAVE to shift onto the small ring if you don't want to, and it doesn't hurt anything being there. You'll save, what, three ounces? And the one day a year you bonk, you won't have a granny gear.

set the limit screw on the FD if you absolutely must lock out the granny
done...
course, you will still have the spectre of 'triple' to haunt your rider personna

a heavy cross to bear for many...

Some Shimano 10 speed shifters have the ability to run in either double/triple mode (well the left shifter). Except that many of them have issues when it's a triple shifter running in double mode (lots of failures from what i've read).

I did it with a 105 triple crankset and it works fine, just like Velo Dog says. I did it because my left shifter failed and I replaced it with a 105 double (didn't know they made one of those, but that's what I bought on Ebay). I figured that if I could only use two chainrings, might as well lose the small one. The only decision you have to make is whether to keep the spacer or not. The spacer makes the center ring the default ring--i.e., the one you spend most time on. If you want to spend most of your time on the big ring, just remove the spacer from the shaft. Shimano explains this very well in their crank assembly instructions. I'm sure other companies do as well.

Personally, I left the spacer in. I use the center (now small) ring for most of my work, shifting to the big ring only at the top end when I want some extra uuummmpf.

It's better to turn doubles into triples. You can ask Mike Scioscia or Joe Torre. They aren'g getting any triples, or even doubles, or even first-base hits. If they could get a lot of triples, they would love it.

I can't possibly imagine why it would be a problem. It would be just like having a bike setup to be a triple, but never shifting to the small chainring.