"This ticks the counter at 300-600ps. Depends on temperature. "
"But, if I put my finger on it (warm it up) it goes slower... if I blow on it I can get it down to 400ps pretty regularly."
" I also can't remove or change anything, or it stops behaving so well. "
"Uses a synthetic clock (internal not gate driving a divide by 2 wire). "
So you are using a feedback loop of gates to generate am oscillator, which is not very stable nor reproducible.
We have told you that multiple times that this is an unreliable design approach.
That is why we have fixed clock sources and PLL blocks to be able to generate fixed frequency stable clock sources.
IDK what is the utility of a 'stopwatch' is where the clock wanders all over the place based on temperature.
"I know what I see can't be seen by you, but it's not just running on a simulator, it's physically running here on my desk and clocking at that rate - so I don't understand why I should be convinced that what is happening isn't happening, and can't be done."
I believe you were able to kludge together a one off hack. But you can't change it nor predict its frequency. Congratulations.
I'm done here. You don't want to listen to experienced FPGA designers that your approach is flawed. Good luck to you.