Not by using enchanted items, but by recharging them. And it'd take forever to get Enchanting to 100 using this method.
And I've never gained any experience from eating ingredients. Maybe my Alchemy was already too high, but it still seems unlikely.

Anyway, it only seems logical that you need to practise to get better at smithing. You don't need to have a ton of iron daggers in your possesion, but you need to smith a ton of daggers to learn how to be a good blacksmith. It's not powergaming, it's logic. You can't be a master smith if all you've ever done is craft a single set of armor.

Now this is a very good idea!

Umm... Well... I could make my own spells in Morrowind, I haven't checked in Skyrim but I'm sure I can do that too!

You cant.

I thought I'd try my hand at smithing until I realised that when you mine ore it takes a whole gaming month to respawn the ore again. That was the end of my smithing days.

i've said this before and I'll say it again, smithing has been poorly implemented. Lets say you want to get a full set of Dragon armour and rather spending 900 hours trying to find a complete set of Dragon armour, even if ythat is possible in the first place, then you are left with NO choice but to spam smithing at some point. Dress it up any which way you want, wether you make rings, armour or weapons it's next to impossible to raise smithing through only making armour as and when you need to for both your character and followers. Upgrading your current set adds little or no XP.

Unless someone is RPing a jeweler, then anyone who claims that they have raised smithing to 80 -100 through only using it as and when they need it is either lying or using the console.

This is why smithing has been poorly implemented as you have no choice but to spam.

Spamming smithing is legit as it's the only way to get certain armours. There's no alternitive.

I know. I was trying to sound ironic, but I suppose I failed.

Using enchanted weapons might have increased your skill in the previous games, but it doesn't in Skyrim. Most of Morrowind's mechanics is gone and saying "It used to be like this before" doesn't prove anything.

Only creating enchantments and recharging enchantments. Otherwise the enchantment skill doesn't increase, not in Skyrim.

About smithing:
It makes complete sense to me that in order to increase smithing you'd simply have to smith. Granted Skyrim sorely misses a weapon degradation feature to make smithing progression occur more naturally if you're not actively seeking to increase the skill. But other than that I have no problems with it actually requiring you to make items at the forge or temper existing items.

It doesn't require spamming daggers or whatever. If you simply temper anything which you're intending to sell to a merchant then the skill will rise through the roof with no sweat. For me, considering a character who's looking to excel at smithing, it makes sense to temper base-level loot items and then sell them off. Together with just smithing whatever level gear you can smith, for yourself, for companions and sometimes to sell it, the skill rises fast enough (or too fast) as it is.

I've yet to witness smithing levelling fast by only improving armours. Even at low levels, it doesn't yeild much xp.

just got to every major city but iron ignots. leather. and leather strips.
just make daggers it takes and hour nad a half to max smithing. i did it the other night

You mean a way that doesn't just seem corny?

Enchant as well as smith, including weapons. You can raise your enchant skill outside of item creation by recharging items, and as your enchant capability increases, smith a new item to enchant and sell the old one.

The other way is to role play the part of someone who would rather spend their time questing and exploring instead of learning smithing through endless repetition, and pay for some training. Aim for one or two smithing levels each time you level up.

If you start using mods to slow down your skill leveling rates, paying for training might become a necessity for certain skills.

It's just like any other skill in life. You get better at it by doing it. Now, making iron daggers 600 times is not realistic to become a master smith, but you'll need to gain experience in smithing by making SOMETHING. You shouldn't hope to become an expert at something if you don't actually do it; many, many times.

To be more realistic and in-character, I'd suggest making only items that are the highest level your smith is able to make. So for example, when you get the Dwarven perk, you should only create dwarven items, and when you get the ebony perk, you should only create ebony items. To me, it's reasonable to making such items actually does increase your knowledge and skill at the forge, while it's silly to think that if you just make iron daggers until your eyes bleed, you'll suddenly understand smithing enough to make daedric. Obviously, you'll have to set these limits on yourself, but as an advlt, that shouldn't be too hard to do.

If you just can't see a reason to create armor and weapons when you already have what you need, then perhaps your character just isn't cut out to be a master smith? Someone that actually masters the craft, like Eorlund Greymane, doesn't just make things he uses himself. He makes them for others, and to turn a profit. If that kind of thing doesn't interest your character, then he's not really a smith, is he?

By the way, it's probably been answered, but you don't gain enchanting experience from using enchanted weapons, but you do gain a bit of enchanting from RECHARGING enchanted weapons.

Find loads of iron and make them into ingots. Then find leather and make loads of strips. Go to the forge and make loads of iron daggers. Now if you want to do enchanting also. Take said daggers and find the banish daedra enchantment or paralyze. Get loads of petty soul gems filled and enchant away. With the banish enchantment you can make around $1000 Gold each......HAVE FUN

Keep telling yourself that. If it makes you feel better about power grinding.

you can allways upgrade your loot, armour and wepons to upgrade your skill not creating a ton of daguers it will take longuer tho

either that or you can make jewell i find trasmute magic and grinding for iron ore a really crazy easy way to do it lol

This.

Just pick up all and any smithing materials you find while dungeon-looting (make sure you always carry around a Pickaxe) and kill every animal you see for its hide/fur. And if that's not enough, just buy the stuff up from the town smiths. Then just wail away at the crafting menu until there's nothing more to craft. Then proceed to sell it all up and be amazed at how the Speech skill increases against your will...

I don't need to make myself feel better about anything when it comes to a bunch of pixels on a screen. If you feel good doing it the lonnnnnnnnnnnnnng laborious way, then more power to you. Whatever floats your boat.

It's been said by now, but building simple items from Leather, Iron and Steel is the best and least expensive way to raise your skill and is effective all the way to mastery.

If you recall, the smithy at the entrance to whiterun was asked to fill a tall order during a conversation you overhear when you first enter the city - if you needed a RP story as to why you make a hundred swords, daggers and leather armor, you could have been just helping out.

...please tell me you didn't level up Alch in Oblivion and previous, just by eating reagents (for tiny, tiny gain) rather than the much more logical/reasonable/rational/"RP" method - actually brewing potions.

As for "smithing only through powergaming".... me, I didn't buy materials from the vendors or "spam" (depends, of course, on your definition of "spam"). I gathered materials in the world, as I found them (ore outcroppings in the world, mines, bandit camp forges, etc), and then spent some time when I went back to town "practicing my craft", as anyone would do to improve their Smithing. I made things. Not just a handful of items that I used, but many things.

Yes, for the final push from Glass armor to Dragon (70-100), I made a concerted effort.... but that still involved hours of adventuring, as I went back over many of the mines I'd already discovered, gathering more materials. As well as hunting animals in the wild for leather & hides.

Finally hit 100 Smithing at level 48.

Didn't strike me as particularly "powergamey".

----
random crafting anecdote. When I was at RIT, I took some elective classes at the School for American Crafts. It was interesting seeing some of the things that the Graduate students in Ceramics did..... yeah, they spent a good bit of time making some serious crazy "art". But they also spent a lot of time honing their skill - by making vast craploads of identical pots and bowls. Generally very simple ones. Really helped them increase their control and accuracy.

Pretty much this :/

+ sleep and have the warriors stone active. 35% lvling speed bonus + 4598375983 iron daggers = 100 in no time. Then later on you can take those iron daggers, enchant them with Banish and sell them back for 700-1k+ gold a piece, plus raise enchanting

It's training... training is almost never useful. The whole 10-15 years you go to school and university, you're not doing anything useful...

Besides, you are a smith. Smiths don't craft for their own use -they craft to sell things. You can make quite a lot of coin when you craft stuff, if you know the drill...

If he goes for fast boosting, upgrading daggers (or anything for that matter) is only throwing resources into the trash can, because upgrading gives much less exp than making stuff from scratch.

What I do is usually saving up on any gold ores/ingots I find, and all iron and silver ingots I find are transmuted with a spell into gold, which I then use along with precious gems to create jewelry which I sell to certain shopkeepers. This is a way for me not to spam the thing up but still get just abotu right gold for all my needs on master difficulty.

Actually, it only takes about 600 or so...

I have leveled up smithing by creating dwarven gear from looted scrap, upgrading loot from foes before selling, and natural upgrades to my own gear. I made cheap gear at low levels from found and mines resources. I never bought resources in bulk from vendors just to craft grind. I never had to grind out the daggers, and it felt rather natural.
I got to 100 around level 35.

It's all going to boil down to buying ore/bars from a blacksmith...so you a blacksmith...can blacksmith. Whether that's iron, steel, orchish, elven materials or whatever. It would be like buying hamburgers from a competitor and then making the burgers and selling them at your burger place or funnier yet, back to the place you bought the burgers from. I really need to get in contact with whoever is selling npc blacksmiths their material. Heavy armor smiths have a slightly easier time actually leveling the skill naturally because of the amount of dwarven metal in the game, paired with easy to get iron, corrundum, and steel.

There just isn't a better way, especially just starting the game. If you go light armor, forget about crafting elven to level, you're going to have a much easier time just making a bunch of steel or leather...wait...now the other blacksmiths have moonstone and malachite already...I'm losing money! I need to craft something cheaper because I can't mine/gather materials fast enough...lets see..iron sword...not bad...oh wait iron dagger. Boom. If there was a way to actually buy a mine or buy raw materials from a source that just sells raw materials at a discount ,it would be a different story. Leveling blacksmithing naturally just isn't done very well in Skyrim. You're better off just making iron daggers, and if you fine some rarer ore in the game go ahead and make something out of it for profit so you can buy more iron.

Edit: I guess you could hunt animals and craft leather, but then you would just be doing a different kind of grind.