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[PTTG??]

It struck me: When you make a pick, half of it is the wooden handle. Crafts of all kinds can be made of several different materials, such as a scepter or a harp. Currently, the only way to simulate this is to decorate such items with the other items. But this is unrealistic for two reasons: you can build a fully functional bed with nothing but lumber or a solid diamond crown; and dwarves consume an entire unit of lumber just to decorate an earring.

There have been a number of suggestions of solutions for those problems; I've kind of combined them into this:
In much the same way that a smelter stores partial units of metal, allow all buildings to store partial units and have these get used in jobs proportionally to the work being done. Probably, this would be related to restacking or job rebuilding, but it may be that it would work rather straightforwardly.
One final advantage is that If more reactions are to be RAWed, then workshops will need to be more universal and generic, and this is an excellent way to use this.

[Nesoo]

I was going to suggest that individual items remember how much of them was used instead (whether it remembers that it's x% of a log, has x volume remaining, x/y portions (like the mysterious measurement of x/7 water), or whatever), but your idea is definitely much friendlier as far as memory use goes, at the least, if not also easier to implement for tasks.

So, I like.

[Zombie]

Yeah. Presumably all of the resources in Dwarf Fortress are some form of claymation version of their original selves, so partial resources and requisite storage of them would definitely make some sense.

I mean, a dwarf takes the same amount of rock to make a door as to make an earring or other trinket? I doubt it. Highly.

If we get more RAW access, though, we'll definitely see a bunch of mods revolving around "resource realism"... Where lots of crafts will be partial-unit creations as opposed to a full unit to make a single item.

Another way we could handle it is simply look at item weight. Input weight - output weight = remaining resource weight. If resources are handled by weight and, presumably, all like-mineral units are the same weight... It would definitely simplify it beyond making an arbitrary "amount" that each unit is comprised of.

It could also be further said that a legendary stonecrafter is more adept at not wasting materials so as where a novice or dabbling stonecrafter would have an input weight - output weight - waste % = remainder... As they get more skilled, the waste percentage amount reduces leaving more useable resource weight. Any remainder underneath the lowest resource requirement could be discarded or, possibly, cut into studs or crushed into powder for colourings and such in paints. Or it could just be treated as claymation resources and be used as a partial resource for making something else.

This way we'd see a logical use of resources where the creation's weight is directly related to the amount of material required to produce it. No arbitrary or x/7 mysteries about it.

Also, I think the reason for x/7 is so it's easily expressable in hex. But that's just my crazy theory.