I was thinking more of simply contacting a battery manufacturer and seeing if they could ship some good quality deep cycle batteries to you dry. Kept cool and dry I suspect the batteries, stored without any acid inside, should last a good long time. Acid storage would be an issue but not an insurmountable one.

As much as I like the idea of manufacturing my own cells, I've made a few small cells when I was in school, I think it is better to use existing designs.