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I verified it again. The crafter goes to work, the progress bar is visible, they are able to get up to around 1/3 done before they become urgently hungry - then the progress bar vanishes and they are stuck requiring my divine intervention.
I have quite a few mods in the mix, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was some interference, but it would take a lot of time to narrow down the conflicting culprit. Hopefully that "unfinished item" can function as a short-term workaround, but for now I'll have to apply a little more divine intervention to get through this.
Sorry for the trouble, but thanks for your help!

@Sixdd, I grabbed your version and finally got around to crafting some tools. Unfortunately, I am seeing my crafter get stuck trying to build the Chainsaw. They appear to lose their progress bar and won't stop to eat or anything - I have to draft/undraft to unlock them from their (unforced) work task.
I'm not sure if this is intended, but the ingredients remain visible on the bench so if I interrupt their work (to have them go eat) then the assumed work done up to that point is lost. This is a big deal with the Plasteel tools since they seem to have a massive work requirement now (900+).
I know for other crafting items (statues, weapons, etc) the ingredients turn into a work project object which has a work amount that gets chipped away at - is something like this possible as a resolution to this issue? The only foreseeable concern would be to ensure that task cancellation results in proper ingredient retrieval.

Yeah this sounds great.  I would also agree that I see a future need for some of these features to be independent modules to pick your favourites from.
Those crude beds make so much more sense for an early setup than the vanilla beds we start with!  That stone butcher's table looks great too. 
For the muffalo I would have expected big saddle bags instead of a cart like that - looks a little cumbersome however technically practical.

Great work, I look forward to hearing more about this development.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Excellent idea BlackSmokeDMax!  I actually hadn't thought it through that far, but now that you describe this with such simplicity I can't help but think this should be similarly simple to program...  I might just be compelled enough to investigate.

In the mean time; for those looking to use this "manual" solution, here is a quick reference to the finer details:
(From the RimWorld 1135 Readme.txt)

To find saved games or config data:

1. Start the game.
2. Open the options menu.
3. Click "open save data folder".

Or look in this folder, depending on your operating system:

WINDOWS:   C:/Users/[username]/AppData/LocalLow/Ludeon Studios/RimWorld/
(On Windows, the AppData folder may be hidden.)

MAC:       /Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/RimWorld/

LINUX:       /home/[username]/.config/unity3d/Ludeon Studios/RimWorld/

I would also like to put in a vote for saving and loading mod order presets... I'm losing track of all my sticky notes and it's a cumbersome manual process!