Supply the locals with better weapons & armor
I always wondered how people 'spam' smithing and get really good at it. I've tried with Gunter, Son of Talos and Lord Haaf-Mersey. The problem always comes down to costs. Smithing supplies can easily destroy the budget if one wants to get good at it, and it takes forever to get from Steel to Dwarven. After months, LHM still hasn't been able to move on to Orcish.

My crusader did the Grimsever quest tonight which is in Mzinchleft (however you spell it). Dwarven ruins, basically. And I realized there's TONS of material in here to use for smithing, and it's completely free to loot. I suppose in the case of iron and other metals, we can just mine the heck out of some ore shafts, but I haven't had a character who's a miner, yet.
Some of you are probably like "duh!" but I take my games at a slow pace. I'm gonna be with Skyrim for years I am sure. Why rush it?
So my crusader's first unofficial quest: supply the local village/town with superior armors and weapons. As he takes dozens of cogs, levers, and other dwarven materials to melt, he's going to bring it all back to Falkreath on his poor horse, melt it down, and then sell some of it to the town, and donate the rest (he'll just leave some dwarven things in the Jarl's court or guard barracks, perhaps.
