"many people are operating outside their area of expertise on this subject."

Exactly. I takes years of really hard work to get good at this stuff. Decades.

I do realize research budgets are not that awesome, but when claims are of aesthetic in nature (explicitly and implicitly) and deal with human craftmanship there should definetly be collaboration with also craftsmen subject experts.

A good example where this was executed really well was the Notre Dame reconstruction (I _guess_). Craftsmen and academic diligence hand in hand.

Not everyones archeological reproduction has such a budget unfortunately.