While not actually using a crafting system (after all, the builder academy doesn't need one...), I have a couple of opinions and suggestions:
Most people (in rl) can learn a skill, given sufficient devotion to learning it. If you spend a lot of time weaving, cooking or banging on iron with a hammer, you'll eventually get good at it, especially if you have a decent teacher, or someone to ask for advice. In a mud context this means (to me at least) that everyone should be able to do everything, just not very well. Heck, I can personally make a knife (and have!) with just a piece of iron, a piece of wood and two nails, given the right equipment (hammer, anvil, forge, saw, etc.). It just won't be very good (it was extremely crappy, but it was double edged, and pointed :P). However, to learn how to do a thing well, you'd have to do it a lot, and learn, as I stated before.
One approach to this would be to limit the total knowledge a character can possess. If for instance character X has learned skill Y to a high degree, but then starts focusing on the unrelated skill Z, X's skill in Y will decrease, because of the loss of attention. Thus, you could have 'jack of all trades' craftsmen, who would be able to do crappy versions of any kind of thing, and specialists within the different fields (fletcher, weaponsmith, cook, etc.) who would be able to make special items (bows and arrows that actually hit something, daggers that didn't break the second time you used them, food that made you full longer and added a slow regenration of mana/hit/move or similar.)
The use of 'unrelated' above is actually the most important part. If focusing on a specialized branch of a general skill, like goldsmithy/jewelrymaking, you don't necessarily lose so much of the general skill knowledge.
And if you make skilltrees like that, you might also include some special skills, like metallurgy, herb knowledge (for the potion maker) and other advanced stuff.
Just my 2 you-know-what...
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