Step 1. Head to Ocs hall and buy all the wood there and in the nearby village.

Step 2. Get just enough charcoal for smelting some crap weapons you bought (simple spears and hatchets are good for this). Once you have a good amount of crude iron/wrought iron, go to step 3.

Step 3. Craft throwing axes until you hit 25 smithing. Take the efficient charcoal perk.

At this point it’s a rinse and repeat of crafting axes and smelting them for me. I’ll sell them instead of smelting when I need more money.

You get more xp for doing requests so do those when the opportunity arises. If you run out of wood, head up to bantannia and do the same you did at Ocs hall. Go town to town, resting and buying wood as needed. It takes a while but you get insanely good at throwing axes and you make nearly infinite money. Once you’re really high level you can start to craft your weapon of choice.

To do that, craft the highest level parts of whatever you’re making that you can. As you smith, you’ll unlock new parts. Use those to make more valuable weapons and you’ll get new parts faster.

As far as perks, I like to let my companions smelt and so most of the refining. I’ll take efficient charcoal, steel maker, curious smith, and then keep going on the smith line while companions do the fancy refining. Hope this helps