Spark ign diesel does NOT need a WMD profane bomb to ride along. It is already in use in some multi-fuel designs for military purposes. Going 2 cycle and diesel is of course my personal preference, but I can't think of any 2 cycle chain saws that are diesel powered.
Jonsereds XA back in 1954 to 1060 is the only one I could find.
Rasmus Wiig in Norway, late 1940's, tried like heck to get people to buy into diesel saws. His Comet was actually lighter weight than most gas saws at the time. With fuel injection instead of a carb, it could run, as he often demonstrated, after being dunked completely under in a barrel of water. The saw used a tandor heated with propane stored in the handles and lit when the operator wanted to start the saw. Once started, the tandor continued to glow from the heat of combustion, and the propane was turned off.
Initially Wiig produced them himself in his "Norwegian Saw Blade Factory", later licensed them to Como as well.
Cold weather = lower pressure propane in the small handlebar reservoirs, so they were hard to start when temperatures dropped.
Wiig & Como combined may have sold almost a couple thousand saws, but they threw in the towel in 1954. They designed a new model and contracted the textile company Jonsreds to manufacture them. That's how Jonsreds got into the saw business.
Jonsereds eventually bought the designers out. Jonsreds then struggled along with several differen models of diesel saws including a few hundred for export with glow plugs, until 1957, when they too gave up on diesel & brought out their first gas saw.
With the right contacts in Scandanavia, there may still be enough parts saws in sheds and such for a few engines as you envision. All the saws (engines) seemed to work well & reliably. Just not convenient to start, and the marketing juggernauts of established gasoline saws over ran them, essentially.
smt
Edited: "Alternate option" - Buy the plans and kit from Metal Lathe Accessories, and scale it up.

These run beautifully. I never made one, but the designer demonstrated one on the table in his kitchen for me, once.