When and what (or even if) to craft?

Last night I was probing around to see if it would be profitable to craft steel, and I soon came to the conclusion that it was not. I've been crafting Vials of Ink, and I'm prettty sure I can turn a profit there (albiet small) and I was wondering if anyone had any luck crafting things.

Now when I say crafting, I'm not talking about spending the money to purchase the basic ingrediants and then crafting, I'm talking about using materials that you've picked up, and using them to craft more expensive items to get more money out of them. Does it turn a larger profit to craft say Deldimor steel, than to just straight out sell the Steel (or even Iron) to begin with? That's what I'm looking for.

For quite a while parchment (from wood) was the best crafring material since monks and necros needed it for their +nrg armor sets. Too bad folks figured this out and the bottom dropped out of a lucrative market. You can still do ok, but not huge profits any more.

rolls of vellum from the crafter outside of droks, 5 wood 5 dust and 20 gold for 1 vellum which costs around 210 gold at the trader to buy. very profitable, aoubt 53k to buy 350 rolls needed for 15k monks tattoos and i spent 7k plus all the wood and dust i had saved up.