Crafting experience

[Shurp]

I have a skill 5 crafter that I want to train to level 10 so that I can have a second worker making good armor and weapons for my colonists.  What is a good way of giving him experience without destroying my steel stockpile?  Unfortunately I am playing on a Tundra map so wood is also too scarce to work with.

Right now I have him making stone clubs.  Is there anything else craftable with stone or is there another common resource I'm overlooking?

[ArguedPiano]

You could have him exclusively make stone blocks. As long as you have the chunks there is always a use for stone blocks.

[ArguedPiano]

Grow cotton and let him made cloth.

In the vanilla game you get cloth straight from the cotton plant. No crafting required.

Grow wood and let him made wood weapons.

This would also work well.

[Panzer]

Wood longswords is a good idea, use a smelter to get 50% of spent wood back. If you got leftover bionic arms, amputate an arm to slow crafting speed, xp awarded arent influenced by speed.

[Wex]

Build a crafting spot and make him build stone clubs and shivs

[Shurp]

Yes, I have him making stone clubs.  I'm on tundra, so the only way I'm growing wood is inside, and that's going to be too slow.  But I like the clothing suggestion.  Cotton grows reasonably quickly and if he does manage to make anything decent I can keep it and use it.  Thanks for the suggestions!

[Cimm0]

Also, some suggestions for better performance:

1) Make the crafting room beautiful so they enjoy being there.

2) Put an armchair next to the workbench where the worker stands (raises comfort while they work).

3) Use two tool kits for work speed bonus.

4) Set crafters to drop products on the ground, let others haul them.

5) Put a small amount of required raw materials next to the work bench so they can start working faster. Others fill haul more raw materials to the spot later on.

[Shurp]

I don't think tool kits exist in vanilla.  And like Canute said, I'm looking to have him spend longer working on dusters (which have the highest labor/resource ratio forcing him to waste the least amount of cloth).

[Wex]

They exist, are called tools cabinet, and they give a 6% speed boost. You can link 2 to a table, and you can have 2 tables per cabinet (so build the room with 2 tables and 2 cabinets, for efficience)

[mussi]

Gladius and Duster have the best ratio between work amount and materials quantity. See attachments for more details.
Also the experience from stone cutting has been lowered significantly in the last alpha(s).

[attachment deleted by admin - too old]

[cultist]

For clothing, I think dusters give the best xp per unit of cloth spent. If you just need to break even, you could probably buy steel from traders and sell the steel weapons he crafts. Stone clubs seem like a safe bet if you have plenty of stone. Don't bother with stonecutting unless you have nothing else for him to do, the xp gain is super slow.

Like others said, don't use tool cabinets if you can avoid it as this means you need to spend more resources for the same amount of xp.

[Shurp]

My map is all mined out, I'm dependent on traders for steel, so I need better than breakeven if I were to go that route.  Cotton seems to be a much better way to go. 

By the time my devilstrand is ready to harvest he'll be up to at least 10