Seems like a good idea, liking the concept as does make sense :) Keep it up! Make a seperate useless item recycling mod like when you pick up those useless items :) Just an idea

Actually Ores ++ has a junk recycling mod (targets bandit-loot) and does scrollmaking. You might want to try it. You can even turn brooms into staffs. I could seperate out the junk portion into another mod, but that may take some work as it is fairly extensive.

just don't sub to both, one won't work, only the book didn't copy, and, if I ever get the TIME I will add the book and round out the staffmaking on the other mod

I think that you should make it so that the player can smelt elven armor and orcish armor into orichalcum and quicksilver which means easier access to the harder mining materials and armor that could possibly be hard to find unless you are doing the thalmor embassy quest

First: The philosophy of this mod is that it will never be an exploit
1. you can never get out of an item something which was not first put in and 2. you will never get the full amount you put in
(I think Steel Warhammers are the exception, it's been a while since I've cracked it open in CK, there you should get 1 for 1 on iron ore).

I decided early on to avoid light armor breakdowns as moonstone is not a metal, malachite has no extra uses, and re-purposing leather doesn't make alot of sense. I suppose I could create a breakdown into a new object like glove-leather or something, and then have multiple leather pieces be part of the workup. That fits into Ores ++ where you can (among many other things) make gloves and break silverware into shards and then up to ingots (designed so that you don't make more or less money by using the mod).
Given that Gilded Armor is the only type that contains quicksilver, and it only has one ingot, giving people a quicksilver ingot doesn't make sense.
Orcish armor is pretty much garbage, I added weapon breakdown to get some more cyan, but you will find that even with weapon breakdown you will still have far too much cyan. Of course, cyan has alchemical properties.... it can make some wicked potions. Liquid Quicksilver is the same way, magicians should avoid quicksilver, it messes with the mind (quicksilver alchemical effects target magic)

If you NEED leather, get mammoth hides. Kill mammoths after that and you will NEVER run out. It would be an exploit if leather weren't so very worthless.