Bingo!
With many thanks also to Elspaeth over at
EQ2traders who caught the thing in a log file, between the info here and there, today we have identified the culprit! It was mainly the White Hot Metal event causing the issues although there were some other irregularities particularly in the level range mentioned in this thread. We getting it fixed up and now we know what to look for, QA is now scanning all the other level ranges and tradeskill classes to make sure there aren't any other similiar issues too.
Many thanks to everyone who contributed time and data to tracking it down! Sorry it took so long, but we got that elusive little bug in the end, and learned how to catch similar ones in the future too!
LINK