I think you're going at it the right way. There's no substitute for a sustained experiment.

I recently watched Mantic's 3-part video series on Method Shaving, and seem to recall him saying that MS has sort of diverged or moved on from the founder's original vision. I don't know whether those details are significant, but if you haven't already watched that particular series, it might ad to your research and preparation.

Good luck and report regularly!