Hi Peter,
For the series coil an RF powdered iron toroidal core would be good like Amidon T-56-6 (yellow) and make say 30 turns to have a high Q 3.6 uH coil and make at least 1 tap on it, wire OD could be 0.3mm. Here is a calculator:
https://www.changpuak.ch/electronics/amidon_toroid_calculator.php Yesterday I quoted 2 uH series coil from the 2nd schematic but sorry it is 12 uH for the 14 MHz crystals so 1/3 of that for the 45MHz one will be close and with the tap you will have one more choice without unwinding.
Regarding the input capacitance of the MOSFET, it changes from within the same type MOSFET batch so do not care about the effect of the series 10 nF, it is really negligible. If you can leave a variable cap in the 2nd cap position, then do so to help vary the tuning/matching in any case.
If the output impedance of the preamp is far from 50 Ohm, then do you have any info what impedance is involved there? any preamp specification or maybe schematic? Not utterly important though (see below why), so no problem if you have no info.
I suggest leaving the preamp in the setup to protect the output of the DDS from any MOSFET "backfire" event, should such occur. If the 2W proves to be too high, then you can still use a passive resistor divider at the preamp input or output to reduce the RF level, the presence of such dividers can help matching between the stages to a certain degree too.
The varicap type shown in the link I gave yesterday is 1SV149 Toshiba. Works between 1V and 8V tuning voltages and has roughly 480 pF and 30 pF at those voltages, respectively. So quite a high capacitance ratio, it establishes the tuning range also for the crystal oscillator. OF course you can connect several varicaps or maybe standard diodes in parallel to increase their capacitance, the higher the capacitance change you can achieve, the wider the tuning range possibility for the crystal will be.
Yes a series inductance is needed when the frequency of a crystal is to be pulled downwards from its natural series resonance frequency. What is more, a tuneable coil would be needed but such is difficult to make to observe high Q in a solenoid form. This is why a variable capacitor (or varicap) is connected in series with a high Q coil, the idea is that by changing the capacitive reactance, the overall reactive impedance (series LC) changes and ideally the resulting reactance should remain mainly an inductive one to pull downwords the crystal.
A dummy load for 45-50 MHz could still be made from carbon resistors I believe, it maybe cheaper than an off the self one? Regarding SWR meter, well maybe it is not really needed: the load eventually will be an inductive coil, not a pure resistor. But it is up to you, to see matching at the output Pi filter first into a dummy load may be useful.
Gyula