Originally Posted by
Jeff Wills
I wonder why no one has pointed you at the hubs used on recumbent trikes. These are cantilever design with axle diameters and bearing sizes appropriate for single-sided support. As a bonus you can get them with drum brakes or fittings for disk brakes. You can buy prebuilt wheels, too:
Utah Trikes Catalog - Front Wheels - Trikes, Upgrades & Accessories
Interesting thought.
The ones I see there appear to be sealed cartridge style bearings, not cone and race.
The advantage to cone and race is those parts are ubiquitous in the cycling world - you can find parts easy just about anywhere. The catch is the custom axle + cones etc, though. If I had a couple spares then that wouldn't be much of an issue - but that goes right back to what I said earlier about going to a trailer design that has the external rail to support a conventional axle - by going that route then all the components could be standard cycling parts including the cones, jam nuts, and axles.