A Fortress made entirely from lead sounds dwarfy. Zinc, considerably less so. Zinc is what the elves would use if they had metal.
The guy I decided to make a noble (and who is now a Count) had a preference for Lead. Which is why I chose to elevate him (that metal, and his favourite stone, were easily available on-site, and the item types he liked were things I'd be making for myself, anyway, like ammo).
His suite of rooms is equipped (according to the basic Count-level need, with perhaps one extra bit of furniture to boost one of his rooms to the quality he needs) with entirely top-quality (short of artefact, that is) lead thrones, tables, cabinets, armour stands, weapon racks and coffers. The only reason I haven't ripped out the walls and replaced them/lined the floor with lead blocks (and probably give him Royal-standard quarters, etc) is that I'd taken the trouble to put him in a part of the geology where his favourite stone is, as well, which is obviously not quite as good but works for me. And he's happy. (Not yet succumbed t lead poisoning, but neither does he appear to be in danger of being irradiated.
)
A minor problem with the Count is that having made a lot of Lead Bins (never intending to export them) he forces me to turn off Cull On Mandates in trading, due to his near-perpetual "Don't export Lead Items" order, in order to transship most of the arts and crafts I wish to get to the Trade Depot.
I never sell bins anyway, on any fort, and am not making anything else of lead that I might want to sell, so I'm not going to annoy him by breaking the given embargo.)
Meanwhile, I have a fort, and a home civilisation, with apparently no native iron ores. I import as many steel items (and bars) as I can, and did originally also import pig-iron (both available, despite the basic iron sparsity... don't know if that'll be consider a bug worth fixing)... except that without basic iron that helps me not at all in getting more steel out of the process.
My Mayor (essentially chosen on embark, and has stayed in the position ever since, as well as being chief Trader and by now a pretty handy stonecrafter when not needed to validate the Job Manager queue) quite likes tin, except that while I'm also zinc-heavy and copper is available and I've got silver (from both the galena and tetrahedrite), I don't appear to have tin. And given I know I haven't any tin bars, I reckon I've not managed to get them from The Old Country, either. Luckily I've not (yet) had any "I want tin things!" requests, in the slightly less than six game-years this fortress has been in existence, so I might be lucky.
The other day (playing-time) I did have to satisfy a cave-spider silk craving, for the mayor, which was easy with the cloth stocks I'd managed to build up. The Count mostly goes for bolts, and I'm churning out silver bolts like there's imminent danger from werewolves, or something. (Actually, zombie wildlife is the prevalent nuisance, but they puff into nothingness when hit by bolts of
any kind, and I've got a lot of bone bolts as well, given my achievements in the animal husbandry department. All grazers eating cave-grass and equivalent, in my slightly sub-surface enclosures, the surface being a snowy waste, what I haven't already built on.))
Sorry, drifting, there.