Ohytue had the idea to make a plugin which allows you to smelt armour and tools and get the ingredients back. A Function calculates the worth of the item out of it's damage level. You will always get atleast 1 ingredient back, it doesn't matter if the next hit would destroy the item. Spades aren't used in the plugin because they only contain 1 ingot, so it would be possible to always re-craft them.
https://github.com/kg9dh/SmeltIt
