Items occasionally disappear when viewing in 3rd person. This is a minetest engine bug and not the fault of the mod, turning 3rd person off then back on restores the view.
Wield item switches direction at certain animation key-frames. I have yet to identify the true cause of this issue but a specially adapted version of the player model can be found [here](https://github.com/stujones11/minetest-models/tree/master/character/sam_viewer) that attempts to work around the problem.