I built some adamantine weapons. How do I now found them? They are not in my weapons pile, magna forge and I take find them on the stocks list but my manager is rubbish so the list isn't very good.
Any advice?
in the noble screen, set your manager accuracy higher and you'll be able to find them through the stocks menu
Got some native gold and platinum showing up in my increasingly futile search for iron. What should I do with it?
If you got copper and silver (usually come together) you can make some basic armor, shields, silver hammers and bash them, or make traps (copper spikes/discs, silver or copper spiked balls - spiked balls are amazingly effective) or crossbows and bolts. Iron can then be harvested from goblin corpses in the form of goblinite.
What to do with non-weapon or armor grade stuff:
make nice statues, chains for prisons (Urist has been content lately, Urist was unhappy about having his freedom restricted (forgot the thought), Urist admired a wonderful chain lately, Urist admired a masterful statue) or stuff to trade for iron stuff with the traders (include toys and other useless stuff).
Set some magma smelters to melt all the iron stuff you don't want to use, which is probably most, and reforge it to your wishes with your master smiths (they should be masters after forging all that silver and copper crap). Magma smelters are really a must here, as you'll be melting a lot, which would eat through a few big forests in charcoal within a few months. Also don't forget to train armor smiths by having them make lots of copper shields (all maps have copper, right?) and melting the ones that aren't masterworks. Material matters little for shields (only for weight/speed/shield bash), quality matters
Note:
Iron is top layer stuff. If it wasn't in the first 10 or so layers, chances are big you're not going to find it. Accept it, and adapt.