Thanks Manny, glad it was helpful. The glass is Robax, I sourced my first bits from Ebay, have found a few in old woodstove doors, and now have an account with the manufacturer. I can get you some if you can't find any locally.
Patching the feed doesn't bother me, I like redoing the plaster around that area anyway, but I get your frustration. I have a few fixes for you. The easiest would be a refractory feed area, another is a metal face on the whole feed top surface with a "door" like Radek's build I linked to earlier. I've got an update video coming of my indoor heater, and one of the things I wanted to do in that video is ask you, and everyone, if you'd like to see me go another year with my existing set up or convert to a batch for comparison purposes. I have an easy way to add it onto the existing system, so it kinda applies to you since you could use the same tech to convert yours if you were interested.
My outdoor core is a batch core that has a bit in common with Peter's design but is based more on my batch experiments from a couple springs ago. I did borrow his P channel, but it has a pretty different internal layout to make the most of the window. I'm happy to share the core design if folks are interested, but it is fairly complex to put together so I haven't shared it publicly due to the complexity of the details.