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[Pwned dwarf]

about 1/4 of my population literally has no skills whatsoever, none of them are good for the draft either. I can easily feed them all though. Any ideas?

[utunnels]

If you don't need  that many workers, you can turn them into soldiers.
Or you can let them all smooth your floors.

[Pirate Santa]

It only takes a year or two for a useless dwarf to become an unstoppable murder machine, start training them straight away.
Even if you send them back to civvie life they'll be much faster at hauling, less likely to get scared, able to work longer, and have a better chance at surviving an attack until the army gets there to save them.

[Orange Wizard]

More soldiers is pretty much standard for spare dwarves. Other options include trap testing and expanding into more industries.

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

I usually just start obsidian farming badly.
They also make good cannon fodder.

[AzTech2064]

just send them into your strip mines until they are legendary miners, after that, military training... or let them fish at a river, and let them be put to rest through carps, sponges or invaders^^

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

I'm considering making them all hunters and releasing them by trapdoor into the caverns until they are decent marksdwarves.

[taptap]

Time to train a legendary cheesemaker!

[utunnels]

Time to train a legendary cheesemaker!

I think legendary doctor is more challenging.

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

Time to train a legendary cheesemaker!

I think legendary doctor is more challenging.

In that case, you can kill 2 birds with 1 stone. no lack of subjects patients.

[ibanix]

1) Create workshop of type interested in (craftshop easiest, due to large amount of stone)
2) Set skill level on workshop to max at, say, 'Skilled'; or assign single peasant to only use that workshop
3) Que up repeat job in workshop for skill; to prevent tons of hauling jobs, disable any stockpiles for the output
4) Disable hauling jobs for dwarf/dwarves in question
5) Wait
6) Check back and find your dwarf at increasingly useful levels of skill

Repeat for more workshops for more dwarves. To maximize skills for single dwarf, use the 'only single dwarf can use this workshop' option (q->P)

Stonecrafting is easiest (tons of stone). Metalcrafting/Metalsmithing/Forging works if you have a ton of fuel or magma. If you do metal, make something that melts back into equal or more of that metal (instruments, leggings, trap components, gauntlets, buckets), unless you have a metric asston of metal. Instruments work great for trade goods. If you use metal, set up a stockpile to only take masterwork items, for trade (don't melt those! makes dwarves unhappy).

Doing this for jewelers is a major pain in the ass, because they tend to run out of gems. If you use dfhack, use the workflow plugin, then use gui/workshop-job (defaults to Alt-A), and set material to 'any material'. This will make Urist McGemCutter gut ANY gem available to him; no need to que up a bunch of different jobs. dfhack can be a little buggy sometimes, so you may want to disable and re-enable the entire plugin ('workflow disable' and 'workflow enable') from time to time. You can also use workshop-job to make gem setters sit around and endlessly apply gems to furniture or goods. Workflow management on gemshops is a whole article by itself....

If you want a skilled Clothesmaker or Leathermaker, you'd better have a good textile industry for raw source; or trade your metal instruments (from above) for every piece of cloth and leather you can get from caravans. This works pretty well and keeps you from ever running out of clothing for dwarves. It also lets you produce a ton of leather cloaks and shields for military dwarves (6 cloaks per dwarf!).

Rock crafts are low value, but if you make enough, you can trade them to caravans for the whole caravan. Make 'crafts', because you get three per 1 rock, and they're light. Don't forget to enable bins, or your dwarves will spend forever hauling them to the trade depot.

[ibanix]

Oh, and if you're going to do some massive construction projects, make a few Mason's Workshops and assign individual dwarves to them, and make rock blocks. You'll get a ton of raw material, they're lighter than boulders, and you'll train the dwarves in Masonry quickly.

[Skullsploder]

You could also start a glass/decoration industry. It's labour intensive and results in all your furniture having gaudy green glass bits stuck in them! But seriously, glassmakers are very useful, and training them up on raw green glass is a win-win way of getting legendaries without useless magma-proof instruments and things accumulating.

[omega_dwarf]

Oh, and if you're going to do some massive construction projects, make a few Mason's Workshops and assign individual dwarves to them, and make rock blocks. You'll get a ton of raw material, they're lighter than boulders, and you'll train the dwarves in Masonry quickly.

Masonry matters somewhat less for construction projects now, since builders don't use that skill anymore. Still useful for furniture, though. And yes, make blocks. All of the blocks. Very useful.

[ibanix]

Oh, and if you're going to do some massive construction projects, make a few Mason's Workshops and assign individual dwarves to them, and make rock blocks. You'll get a ton of raw material, they're lighter than boulders, and you'll train the dwarves in Masonry quickly.

Masonry matters somewhat less for construction projects now, since builders don't use that skill anymore. Still useful for furniture, though. And yes, make blocks. All of the blocks. Very useful.

Well, I'm still on .0.34.11.