Help me procedural meshes

Alright, I'm embarking on a long voyage here, I'm going to try to write an equipment system that uses a single skinned mesh renderer. I could use a really clear overview of how Mesh vertices, UVs, bind poses, and bone weights work together to make a skinned mesh.

Context: I've got a bunch of characters. They're all customizable. I want to draw all their equipment with a single separate SMR, and use a script to position the bones of this SMR in the same position as the target bones on the character.

I don't have access to my development machine at the moment, otherwise I'd crack open the procedural mesh sample project. I'd really appreciate a description of how Mesh works rather than an example at the moment.