It would be a great asset to world realism as well as game play if iron things could be recycled. As I see it there are two possible approaches that could alternatively be implemented:
Variant Ⓐ: The glass-furnace/mixing-spot approach
Establish a new crafting station that allows for recycling all iron-made items with an additional charcoal as crafting requirement and create the corresponding amount of ingots, similar to the way bottles are created and in the way the mixing spot allows returning to some base products.
Variant Ⓑ: The in-world approach
Have all iron-made items smelt in the vicinity of a burning coal fire at reasonably high temperature. This would probably require creating intermediary items to represent the different amounts of iron used when creating things. One could have heavy lumps of iron (corresponding to 4 ingots), lumps of iron (2) and small lumps of iron (1) that could – in a separate, follow-up crafting step – be turned into the corresponding amount of ingots once more. In order to represent smaller items like nails and fittings one could also have a "tiny lump of iron" that can only be turned into an ingot in multiples.
It would be a great asset to world realism as well as game play if iron things could be recycled. As I see it there are two possible approaches that could alternatively be implemented:
Variant Ⓐ: The glass-furnace/mixing-spot approach Establish a new crafting station that allows for recycling all iron-made items with an additional charcoal as crafting requirement and create the corresponding amount of ingots, similar to the way bottles are created and in the way the mixing spot allows returning to some base products.
Variant Ⓑ: The in-world approach Have all iron-made items smelt in the vicinity of a burning coal fire at reasonably high temperature. This would probably require creating intermediary items to represent the different amounts of iron used when creating things. One could have heavy lumps of iron (corresponding to 4 ingots), lumps of iron (2) and small lumps of iron (1) that could – in a separate, follow-up crafting step – be turned into the corresponding amount of ingots once more. In order to represent smaller items like nails and fittings one could also have a "tiny lump of iron" that can only be turned into an ingot in multiples.