DIY turntable from a log? Yes! But I need parts...

Well, sort of.
I have a bit of nicely seasoned rock maple to work with, and I was going to build my best friend a turntable from a slice of one piece. He's getting married, and I don't want to just give him some boring thing. This would be pretty special. I'm not good at much, but woodworking, I can actually kinda do, and this wouldn't be a terribly hard project. I could make it look awesome.
If money was no object, I'd grab a Debut Carbon or something and just rip the parts out and swap in my custom-made plinth. But as it is, I probably only have $150 max to play with. So, hardware wizards, I could use your input.
My friend isn't a super picky audiophile. If I got him an actual Debut Carbon, for example, he'd be over the moon and use it forever. So I don't need to go too crazy here. What would you recommend for parts? Try to find something complete and strip it? Order individual parts from somewhere? The budget is pretty strict, unfortunately. I don't have tons and tons of time, either, so I'd also prefer not to fabricate too much from scratch if I don't have to. I do have a spare Oyster cart I can put on, so that would save me $50...
What do you think? Any input would be VERY very much appreciated!

 

Have you seen this guys work?
http://audiowood.com/

Looks like he uses mainly Pro-ject and Rega arms. I know I'm not answering your question, but I thought you'd want to see these "log" 'tables.

 

Niiiice! Yeah, that's exactly what I'm looking to do. Beautiful. Now I'm thinking I might need to spring for a glass platter...

 

And so the descent into madness begins . . .

 

OK, I've done some more research, and it looks like getting something complete and breaking it down is going to be the way to go. So this becomes a much simpler question: anyone seen a Rega P1/Pro-ject Debut around for a great price? I'd really like to keep it under $150, but I could stretch that a liiiitle bit if I need to. There's one on eBay at the moment for $235, but I can't quite swing it...

 

I do have a Rotel RP-900 without a tone arm if you're interested.....motor, platter etc are all good to go.....cover is pretty good, clody, no cracks IIRC....no belt but those are cheap. Then all you would need is a tonearm and you could do anything you wanted. Send me a PM if you are interested.

Here is a link with some info....apparently it's similar to the Planar 2 and a couple of others. http://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=46161

 

PM sent. Recommendations on a reasonable tonearm, folks?

 

Check Music Direct's Demo and Clearance page:
http://www.musicdirect.com/s-17-clearance.aspx?CategoryFilterID=529&

Inventory changes pretty frequently. They had a Debut III for as low as $269 recently.