LC – They do claim that their Keilim will be used in Bais Shlishi, as otherwise it would be assur to make them because of LoSa’asun Iti – Lo Sa’asun k’dmus shamashi (R”H :כד), and making them b’tumah is not a problem because you can just be metaher them afterwords. However, their keilim are full of mistakes, and they simply don’t care – I went there with a list of 316 questions (not a typo – there really are that many problems that I noticed) on their keilim a couple of years ago, first asked the people there, then got sent to their kollel (they have a kollel, or at least they used to, upon whom they base (officially) everything they make), then to R’ Arielli (I think his name was), then said that I should give them my list of questions and they would get back to me. Eventually, they sent me responses to four questions, one of which agreed to the question, and another one which was cholek on a befarish Tos’ in Zvachim without a single Rishon to back them up. In one spot they even told me that they made it not like the gemara because, according to them, it wasn’t necessarily assur and the artists liked it more that way.
So no, I’m not exactly such a fan.
In addition, they really should have big problems with mi’illa, as a lot of the money given to them, at least by goyim, is given l’shem bedek habais. I even saw one woman give a hundred dollar bill saying that it was for “a stone for the Temple” once, and it went into the same cash register as everything else. There probably isn’t a problem to just look at their keilim though, as ein meila b’kol ubimareh, but they do other things as well, and I’m not so sure that paying would be muttar.
BaltimoreMaven, I have never heard of them making clothing for Kohanim (other than their clothing on display, in which they make plenty of mistakes, assumptions about what certain materials and processes are in which we have no mesorah and we have many, many mochlokes achronim which they paskened on their own based on practicality (or ignored outright), completely ignore the Yerushalmi in Yoma, and decided, in seven different cases, to go l’kula against the gemara’s teiku (I wonder who they decided Eliyahu haNavi is?). It really is not practical to make these begadim anyway, as they have to be perfectly, and I mean perfectly (look at the gemara in Zvachim), fitted. I also never heard of these classes, but again I wouldn’t assume that they are anything real either – they don’t exactly have a good track record.
Oh, and LC – there was a base to the menorah (I’m not exactly sure what you mean), and ny the northern wall of har habais there was (and still are remnants of, its a muslim school now but you can go there if you bribe the guard when there school isn’t in session if the police don’t catch you) a fortress on the northern wall of har habais which was first built by Yiddin but was later taken by the Romans.