THese are all accurate, although I suggest adding "It will always go wrong first time you try something new". Maybe that doesn't matter so much in textile studies, but in the archaeometallurgy and alchemy stuff that I'm interested in, there's always something that goes wrong, unless you have good quality instructions available.
When it does go wrong I am usually left with a better appreciation of the skills of our ancestors.
Heather, I prefer the readable one with gaps for scribbling in - that makes it less confusing as you don't have to keep track of where you are in two plans.
Guthrie, trying something new should not be part of an experiment - that's for the preparatory exercises and tests. If you still need instructions on how to do the basics, that means you'd still have to do some practice runs with the technique, not tackle an archaeological experiment.
But you're totally right, otherwise - it takes time and practice to figure out things, and something new tends to go wrong (or go right and be impossible to reproduce). And I'm often amazed by the skill level of those long gone!
The short readable one is the laminated/sealed one stuck to the wall and therefore 'unloseable' and can be referred to throughout. The one with gaps in is also the one that acquires the charcoal smudges. Otherwise, as I found, you spend half the time leafing through an experiment spread over several sheets, which has the potential to cause problems.
The smallprint where I did my experiments was that for health and safety reasons there had to be a concise, offical and approved version prominently displayed and publically viewable throughout for any visitors (including health and safety persons) to review or make themselves familiar with.
Also, checking that the 'obviously workable idea' really does work can be an experiment in its own right. The first experiment I did with the apparatus was to see if we had all the bits because according to one school of thought we did and no further research into the apparatus was necessary. The other more practical schools of thought were proved right when we showed that even with the best will in the world it wasn't going to work like that...
Heather