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[Hans Lemurson]

I have a few questions about melting down objects to get metal back:
-How efficient is it?  How much metal do you lose?
-Are some objects more efficient than others?
-With the current bug of bins and barrels costing only one metal bar, can you exploit this to create metal from nothing, or at least break even for an infinite cycle of blacksmith and furnace-operator training? (I have magma so fuel's no issue)
-How does the game deal with melting tiny things like bolts or goblets?

[MarcAFK]

I think i remember that on most objects smelting gets 1/3 what the item cost, but with bolts a single bolt returns as much metal as a whole stack, so you used to be able to generate extra metal like adamantium by firing bolts against a wall into stacks of one then collecting them, smelting then reforging new bolts... erm 1 bolt returns 1/10 of a bar, 25 stacks of 1 will return 2.5 bars.
Theres a link somewhwere .... http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=32380.msg464368#msg464368
I thought there was another thread where someone got a working exploit system working, they mentioned neeeding to put a channel under the target to catch the bolts, you need to use a live target like a chained goblin, and an automatically closing door or something to stop the bolts actually hitting the target and killing it..
But like that topic mentions you can just add a free adamantium smelter reaction...

[Hans Lemurson]

I've verified the "put a channel in front of your archery target" method of bolt collection.

When an item like a toy or something yields only a fraction of a unit of metal, like say, 0.2, then what happens if you melt down 4 bronze toys and 4 iron toys?  Does the smelter keep track of how much you've melted so far of each metal, or does it wait until enough has been collected for a whole unit of metal?

[Psieye]

I know the wiki details this for 40d and I'm assuming it hasn't changed for DF2010. Short answers: You get about 1/3 of the metal back, some items give better returns (e.g. spikes and leggings), fractions of metal bars are stored in the smelter until enough is saved up for a full metal bar but they are lost if you deconstruct that smelter.

[pushy]

When an item like a toy or something yields only a fraction of a unit of metal, like say, 0.2, then what happens if you melt down 4 bronze toys and 4 iron toys?  Does the smelter keep track of how much you've melted so far of each metal, or does it wait until enough has been collected for a whole unit of metal?

With the example you gave, you wouldn't get anything (yet). The smelter would keep track of what's been melted down in it so it'd know that another bronze or iron toy would put you up to 1.0 bronze or iron and give you a bar in return. But apparently what was melted in each smelter was kept separate, so if you had two smelters and melted 4 bronze toys to get 0.8 bars in one smelter, and melted another bronze toy to get 0.2 bars in the second smelter, you'd still get nothing because no individual smelter had enough melted in it to return a bar. That's supposedly how it worked in 40d, and (like Psieye) I assume it hasn't changed for 31.xx

[forsaken1111]

If the entire purpose is to cheat the system and get free metal, you can just add in 'free metal' reactions to your smelter. Seems easier...

[Hans Lemurson]

That's not the purpose of my question, I was just wondering if it would be a side-effect.  It seems that the yields from metal recycling are so pitiful as to be hardly worth it except to convert useless metal items into something theoreticly useful.

[forsaken1111]

In 40d on particularly metal-poor maps I would buy every caravan out of every metal item they had and melt them all down regardless of value so I could craft useful things with it. It worked well enough, and got rid of the damn goblin clothing.

[greycat]

What else are you going to do with 4 dozen (copper helmet)s from the goblins?  Might as well melt them down and make some copper bins or goblets or something.