Is this right:

You have a loop of line running through two blocks, one block directly above the other. The top block is fixed, and there is a dead weight hanging from the bottom block. This is shown in Figure 1.

Another line is attached to the loop at some point. The other end of that line is attached to an electronic scale. You hold the electronic scale in your hand(s) and use it to pull the looped line through the blocks while keeping the pulling line tangent to the looped line. As you pull, you try to maintain a constant rate of displacement, typical of line sheeting on a boat. As you pull, you record five load measurements from the electronic scale. The average of these five measurements is what is reported as the friction.

This second paragraph is what is not shown in Figure 1, and can't be figured out from your paper (at least I couldn't). I'd really expect to see this sort of explaination in a published, peer-reviewed paper.