Steel bar smelting
Buy iron ore and coal, smelt steel bars, sell the bars. A simple free-to-play processing loop.
Steel bars are the workhorse of the Smithing economy — consumed constantly by cannonball makers and by anyone training the skill — which makes them reliably liquid.
The Blast Furnace halves the coal needed per bar, and that halving is essentially the entire margin. Smelting steel at an ordinary furnace is usually not worth doing.
The inputs are iron ore and coal, and both move independently of the bar price. Checking all three before a batch is what separates this from gambling.
It is a volume business with a small per-bar margin, so buy limits on the ore are the practical ceiling on the rate.
What you actually do
- 1Buy iron ore and coal in bulk from the Grand Exchange.
- 2Smelt them into steel bars at the Blast Furnace or a regular furnace.
- 3Sell the bars and repeat when the buy limits reset.
Getting the most from it
- The Blast Furnace halves the coal needed per bar, which is most of the margin.
- Steel bars are consumed steadily by Smithing trainers, so they sell reliably.
- Check the ore and bar prices together before every batch — the margin swings.
Similar methods
Blast Furnace gold bars
Smelt gold ore into bars at the Blast Furnace for the fastest Smithing experience in the game, at close to break-even cost.
- Est. GP/hr
- 0–300k
- Starting GP
- 2m
- Attention
- Hands-on
- Requirements
- 60 Smithing
Cannonball smithing
Turn steel bars into cannonballs. Slow experience, steady profit and one of the most AFK activities available.
- Est. GP/hr
- 150k–300k
- Starting GP
- 500k
- Attention
- Very AFK
- Requirements
- 35 Smithing
Cooking raw fish
Buy raw fish, cook it, sell it cooked. A simple processing loop that trains Cooking at the same time.
- Est. GP/hr
- 80,000–250k
- Starting GP
- 200k
- Attention
- Moderate attention
- Requirements
- 40 Cooking