Awesome ideas, all. Such a good spirit of generosity and collaboration!!
A few of us already have a PM thread going to try and coordinate the build, no one wants this to feel exclusionary at all - only helpful and efficient. Thinking along the same lines as we're doing here.
We're also in touch with a generous soul who is covering the barrel cost and have some feelers out there for a smith and engraver.
I would imagine, in the next 24-48hours we would have a blueprint together for share and also a PayPal account set up for donations for the build cost and possibly another for the tickets.