Every “Thing” I have detected so far is till in my list of “Things” on my personal system. In the demo, there are a LOT of “Items” which are properties of “Things” with no ‘parent’ “Thing” in the “Things” list.
???
Once I have created equipment from the Thing, is the Thing no longer required?
No, the Things are required, as they provide the channels Items are linked to.
Could you please give an example, which Items you are seeing where the Thing is missing in your opinion.
Items without a channel linked to and therefore no Thing can be found can be so called proxy items, which are helper items used in rules.
Edit: If you are refering to the shutter/blinds Items or the lights, as there is no real (physical) hardware atteched to the demo, you will not see any Things for that type of devices. But in real life, you will have some devices controlling your lights or blinds, which are represented by Things and you will have Items to control their state.
The only “Things” listed in the Demo under "Things are Heat Pump, Sun, Moon, and System Info.
Yet, all the bedrooms have some kind of temp sensors. Which means they have to be tied to a “Thing” - which doesn’t exist under “Things”. There are automated blinds, door sensors, lights, switches, etc. But none show up under “Things”.
Ah. You’re edit answered my question. 
It’s just because there is no REAL hardware.
Thanks.
I wonder if it makes sense to see if we could use the Magic Binding to fake up some Things for those Items in the demo. I’m not entirely sure that’s wholly possible nor whether it would cause more confusion than solve, but it’s a thought that just occurred to me.
I was looking to see how the THINGS were… detected (and named!) to see how those settings passed on (or not) to equipment/items…
So - it would be nice to be able to “follow the chain”. But, the world won’t end. I’ve now got a pretty good handle on it.
That part is always optional and mostly not terribly meaningful. For example, I’ve a Zigbee smart plug. The Thing UID is zigbee:device:zg_coordinator:000d6f000a798ee4. this Thing is labeled “Peanut Plug 1” (I’ve got five of these things. Hint, use a sharpie to write the number on the underside of the plug to keep them apart 
).
It’s switch Channel is linked to two different Items: “Bannister_Lights” and “FrontRoom_Humidifier”. During Christmas time this plug controls the Christmas lights on the bannister and the rest of the year it makes a dumb humidifier slightly smarter. Both of these Items are situated into the semantic model.
These Item names have nothing to do with the Thing UID nor the Thing Label.
The point is, the name of the Thing does not always have a bearing on the names of the Items. It’s good when you can have the Things and Item name map in come way. It’s less work for you that way and it is indeed nice to have that thread you can follow by name through the system. But it’s not always possible and it’s far more important to make sure your Items have a meaningful name than that they follow the labels of the Things. Even when they are different, you can still trace an Item to a Thing and a Thing’s Channel to an Item through the Link.
Never worked with the Magic Binding, so no clue if it would bring some benefit.
Have to think about it a bit…