Fire got too low before the fan came on. Went out or would have if I didnt tend it and add a couple pieces of dry wood. Readjusted the "constant air" a little more open. Blower is now off and temp has climbed to 200+°. Watching carefully to make sue it does not boil. It should start to drop soon. Maybe the fan will never come back on until morning.
I've made about 30 trips to the basement, out to the boiler, back to the basement and back up the steps. That's just about enough for today!
May need a cycle timer for the blower.
What you're describing is what a lot of company's dealt with trying to get shelled corn to work as a fuel for OWB. We had a Wood Master dealer right in town that had one of the first prototypes for a corn boiler, what a pain. Corn has to be mighty cheap to use as a fuel when wood can be had.
I messed around building one as well. Just built the fire pot to play with. A vertical pot force fed from the bottom burned the best, but was harder to light and maintain a fire during idle times, was also very finicky about fines in the corn, moisture and any broken kernels.
A horizontal fire pot was easier to fab up. Used one gear motor to turn the stirrer very slow, like 3-4 rpm. Corn burns incredibly hot, kept burning up the stainless steel I used for an agitator. Went with a piece of 3/4 pipe instead, drilled a 1/4 hole in it then welded a piece of 1/4" stainless pipe over the hole then forced air thru the 3/4" pipe to cool the stainless. That worked better, one motor for the agitator and another motor to feed corn separately with a on/off delay. Still couldn't keep it lit during idle times, would burn fine all day, but might or might not like an hour of idle time. Finally bought an electric pencil torch off the net, pump a certain cfm of air thru that and end up with 1500 degrees at the tip, used a set of timers to fill with fresh corn, then so much time on the electric torch, then the agitator and fuel feed. Worked like a charm, then corn went up enough that we could actually make money on it instead of losing money as soon as the seed went in the ground, whole thing is still back in the scrap pile.
Your ideal of a cycle timer for the blower sounds promising, might want to add a second high limit so if it does get around 200F it doesn't cycle.