Between Me and Slip I think we've deduced that you must forge yourself a (insert metal tier) hammer before Customers will acknowledge your smithing prowess for that tier.
In otherwords my old method of "Buy 1, make a dagger, and sell it asap" no longer works
and now its "Wait until you can either make a pick to mine more of it and then make a hammer with what you mine immediately"
Or "Make wait for three and make a hammer immediately, and wait for someone to try and get something that takes only one ingot"
In any case. It seems you'll need a hammer and once you have that, within a day or two they should eventually ask for the next tier - but they may still constantly ask for copper.
