I have been playing this game for some time and though I would share my strategy for collecting items and Dismantling them. I will explain my process but the method is pretty simple.

When it comes to workstations you can do this in one of the work stations below.

Each workstation has its own uses for recycling items you will need at least two workstations to break down the items.

For effectiveness you can use a spare Armourer's Table for fabric and metal and a Woodwork Bench for wooden items.

• Armourer's Table
  
• Blacksmith's Forge
  
• Bowyer's Table
  
• Sewing Station
  
• Smelting Furnace
  
• Woodwork Bench

When it comes to metal items you can use one of the three workstations to smelt down metal items:

• Armourer's Table
  
• Blacksmith's Forge
  
• Smelting Furnace

It is recommended that you use a smelting furnace early-game so that it does not interrupt your production line for black smithing or armour crafting. Mid-game I suggest using a spare Armourer's Table as it can also do fabric items.

For wooden items you will need one of the workstations for breaking down wooden items:

• Bowyer's Table
  
• Woodwork Bench

It is recommended that you use either a workbench or a spare workstation for breaking down items so it does not interrupt your production line.

For fabric items you can use one of the following workstations to break down fabric materials to either leather, wool or linen.

• Armourer's Table
  
• Sewing Station

It is recommended that you use a spare work station, if you use an armour's table you can also smelt iron items too so it could double it's use, wooden items you will still need a spare wood workstation.

When using workstations with production bills you will need to put the dismantling at the top of the priority list if its at the bottom then it could backlog items until production is complete.

Which is why having a spare workstation could help take the pressure off of the production line if you have more than one person dismantling items.

Also you don’t need to worry about skill level when it comes to dismantling items its actually recommended you tell people to do it with a low level so they gain some skill points.

You will only need two bills one for HP and one for Quality.
Early one you will want to care less about quality and focus on HP.
Use the sliders to adjust the HP percent and the Quality level for dismantling.
It does not matter what order these two bills are in just that they are at the top of the production in your bill list.

For HP I would keep the range between 0 and 74% this way new items won’t get scrapped imitatively after creation.

Once you have production of the kinds of tools you want to refine you can start to be less picky with quality and set the range between Flimsy and Sturdy this leaves anything with Good quality and up as armour your settlers can use giving that it has at least 75% HP remaining.

If you want to filter out specific items like crowns, savage plate armour wood armour etc you can also make a third bill for this and select the types of items in the filter list which you want to always recycle.

Though this is not required it can help late game if your focusing on select armour sets for your types of settlers late game. Early game you may not want this bill though and focus mainly on HP only.

Under the manage tab you can make custom rules which types of armour and weapons your settlers can use. See below for the steps.

Using the bill system above you can then tell your settlers to pick up items that have 75% HP (AND) quality of Good to Flawless.

Early game you may want to allow quality from Flimsy to Flawless but make sure your bills are also configured this way.

• Step 1: Select the mange tab
  
• Step 2: Select one of the types of gear boxes.

• Step 3: select the box
  
• Step 4: Then select Edit Armour button at the bottom of the list.

• Step 5: Select the + icon to add a new custom set (Sets can be used across all saves)

• Step 6: Give the set a name.
  
• Step 7: Set the values for HP and Quality so its above what your recycling.
  
• Step 8: Select what items your settler should use (You may want more than one set for different settler types eg: heavy armour for melee, medium armour for bow, light armour for works etc)
  
• Step 9: Once done close out of all the windows and go back to the main menu screen.
  
• Step 10: Select the new set you made for your settler.

When it comes to dismantling items skill level is not important though crafting good items are.So make sure that you either tell people in to work on it specifically then disable the task after they are done as it could end up wasting resources if you keep that person allowed to work on production items. With that being said dismantling items does give a bit of XP so you can improve their skill over time similar to telling low level farmers to just plant crops.

If you have any questions or feedback leave a comment and I will do my best to get back as soon as I can. Also if you could take a second to rate the guide this will really help out too.