Best way to get materials to powerlevel Blacksmithing?

[Alcaeus]

Hello, I've been trying to lvl my blacksmithing for the past 3 days. I'm a lvl 49 Human Warrior that has mining and blacksmithing as main professions.

I've been following a leveling guide for the past 3 days and have gained 40 skill points... That's all I've been doing. No questing and no grinding, just trying to get the materials I need to lvl blacksmithing.

I'm currently at skill lvl 146 and am having a very difficult time collecting heavy stones. I've searched and searched for iron deposits and it seems like I'm getting about 20 heavy stones per hour... I've also stopped at the AH and it's very rare to see any heavy stones for sale. I've bought about 40 heavy stones at the AH over the pasted 3 days :(

I use thottbot and wowhead to point out specific places where iron deposits are most common but the places they point out seldomly have iron deposits at all? Am I missing something? I have 450 hard stone for the next phase of blacksmith leveling but man, heavy stones are a pain in the rear...

Am I expecting too much too fast out of leveling the blacksmithing profession? I thought getting to 300 would be cake in a week but man, I'm either doing something totally wrong or just expecting it to be very fast like mining.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Alcaeus

[teck21]

EVerytime I've need iron ore to level my mining, I've gone to Arathi Highlands. The entire eastern part of the map, all along the mountains is full of iron ore nodes.

Starting from the cave with all the kobold types, run all the way down along the mountains. The witherbark village and cave are good for another 2-3 nodes and one mithril.

Keep on running to the cave with the ogres in the SSW, and easily 2-3 more nodes there.

And there is also another ogre cave that's sort of west of the alliance camp, somewhere in the middle of the map. That one's good for 2 iron ore nodes, and the mountain which houses it is usually good for 1 more.

The iron is there. It's up to you to get it.

AFter that southern STV seems like a pretty good place for mithril.

[ArTizan]

Badlands also has some good iron drops, around the mountainsides and to the SW :)

[dwarfenhelm]

lvl 49 go to badlands and grind your mines there you will have no probs gertting iron by the bucket load mucjhmore than ou could ever find in arathi and also when you skill up on the iron you will be able to mine the mithril as well as get a little xp from mobs at same time. you will find silver gold and tru silver in bad lands as well and if your lucky the eles drop core of earth that you will need later on.