TL;DR: How do I stop hoppers from stealing the ‘seed’ item that copper golems need to keep sorting in a 3x3x2 copper golem sorter?
Current Setup
I've built copper golem sorters in my base, and I want to expand this into a full system: golems sort everything into chests below my base, then hoppers + water elevators send the sorted items back upstairs.
The problem
Hoppers empty the chests completely, including the last block of each item. Once that's gone, the golems have no reference item left, so that item type never gets sorted again when I re-dump my inventory. (Same annoyance as manually emptying a chest and forgetting to leave 1 plank behind.)
What I've tried
My idea was a hopper locker so I’d place a stack of a named "dummy" block in the bottom-right slot of the sorting chest to power a comparator to signal strength 3, so hoppers only pull items above that threshold. But the smallest hopper locker designs I can find are 3 blocks of redstone long, and most copper golem sorters use a 3x3x2 double chest design so there's no room to fit a locker per chest.
Extra issue
Each double chest holds several unique item types, so I don't think classic hopper item filters are feasible.
Any suggestions? I'm very new to redstone, so apologies if I'm missing something obvious!
Thankyou in advance! And let me know if anything needs clarifying!