There seems to be a bug in smelting quality. I made 3 17 volume oravir ingots. The first one, made with a damaged crucible, turned out better than the second and third ingots. After discussing with people it seems that this is because there is no float on the quality. The first ingot was made with 5 nuggest. A massive, a large and 3 tiny. The second and third ingot were made with 17 tiny nuggets. The first ingot was well-crafted, the second and third were below average. All steps were completed, nothing missed, and the crucible was cleaned after the first one. It seems to me that the quality shouldn't be finalized until the ingot is.

When smelting, ingot quality is directly tied to the purity of the material you are smelting. Tools that are damaged or performing the wrong action can lower the final quality, but the only way to make it better is to add flux to the mixture to increase it's purity. If you are using the society purchased stuff fluxing once will generally get you to outstanding quality and twice will take it to mastercrafted. Make sure your rod isn't all all jacked up, that has burned me before