I am rather new to EQ2 but I will share my experience and thoughts on tradeskilling:
I start off as BluieScholar posted, by opening my Knowledge Book when I go to craft something. When I see what is highlighted, i'll drag those to a hotbar and scope them out while watching for any accidents to happen.
As Bluie stated, there are some that affect durability and some that affect progress.
Normally as ive seen, the ones that affect durability would be like: +20 durability, -6% chance of success>
And the ones that affect progress would be like: +20 progress, -5 durability
Now those obviously arent exact numbers, but you'll get the picture.
What I do to stay fairly successful is if an accident happens early on while my overall durability is still huge, i'll use the +progress fixes to get a quick jump on completion, then as my durability goes down i'll use the +durability fixes to attempt to bring it back up. By using the +durability, you can even lose pristine and bring it back up and finish with the perfect item.
Once I hit level 20 craftsman (I assume was level 20) I found more skills in my book that were specific to craftsman, so keep an eye out for those. Hope that helped a little bit.. at least.
If not, oh well, im having fun ;)