I know where you are coming from, but to be honest I think apprenticeship should be required (or at least on-the-job training) to be able to do a craft such as this. By giving up all the information up front removes the need to search out those crafters, and removes any mystery of how crafting is done. Its even possible (though unlikely) that there may still even be secrets left in some of the crafting fields. In the days of the middle ages books were rare and the literate were few. Crafts were learned from apprenticeship. I would like to keep this kind of setup for our server. Another way of promoting roleplaying too.
If you want to be a tradesman, you should have to seek out other tradesmen for the knowledge or as a last resort have to stumble upon the secrets with a bit of difficulty by yourself if you don't.
As for the established crafters, I know a handful of master smiths, one master woodworker, and one fellow with a pretty good leatherworking ability. If you ask around IG or post notices in the IC section of the forum, I'm sure you could hunt someone down without too much difficulty. Some of the smiths, including Torgan, have mastered the basics in all the crafts as smithing requires knowledge in quite a few areas to produce their goods.
For example:
Metal armor needs smelting, smithing, and hide curing.
Shields needs smelting, smithing, and carpentry.
Weapons needs smelting, smithing, and sometimes carpentry.
The big exception is arrow/bolt making. Lots of knowledge in several areas for this.
Arrows/bolts needs smelting, smithing, carpentry, and woodworking. All in good amounts to make steel versions. (Getting good in all these skills is a pain, let me tell you! But I'm making steel bolts/arrows already.)
But, I've trained folks in smithing and leatherworking before, and if you catch me at an idle moment or doing crafting myself, I'd be more than happy to RP some training.