You're still missing it. Go to an armor or weapons bench, and go into Craft mode (not Transfer mode, and not Workshop Build mode). select a weapon or piece of armor, and R will be the option to scrap that item.

Correct, if you are in the crafting mode, you can scrap weapons and certain armor pieces on the weapon and armor workbench.

I would love to be able to scrap stuff in the field, so I can continue with my mission and with the looting!

See above - all armor and weapon workbenches have the scrap option, when in crafting mode NOT build mode - no matter what version you are playing.

There is a benefit for scrapping things manually. If you reached your build limit (build menu - upper right corner - size bar), you can toss junk, armor or weapons or mods on the ground, then get into the build menu and scrap what can be scrapped or store the items that can't be scrapped. You will see the yellow size line go down, making more room for you to build more stuff.

Your a mad man, a mad man I tell you, just put them in a work bench and take out what you don't want destroyed.

I used to do that when I was playing the settlement game. My M.O. when going to a new settlement was to bring enough mats so that I could build however many turrets, beds, etc. I might need. So much easier (and possibly less wasteful) to just bring a batch of oil along than try to figure out how many gas canisters, used oil cans, and/or blowtorches to carry.

That would change, of course, if I get the Local Leader perk, but I'm nowhere near that point yet. And TBH, the chore of scrapping junk is the main reason I've put settlements and the Minutemen quest line on hold for the time being.

Pretty muich everything of mine goes in the workshop, the exception being Weapons I want to keep for later, armour as well, my spare Ammo and spare demo stuff.

I used to seperate my Aid items as well, but that made chemistry and cookery a pain.

I'm a bit surprised that nobody has mentioned this, but there is a popular theory (haven't checked it myself) that if you don't manually scrap objects that have two or more components, you will lose the components not being used when you build or mod something. That is to say that if you use duct tape (which has both cloth and adhesive as components) to get cloth for a bed, the adhesive will simply disappear, rather than being added to the workbench junk file as adhesive.

There are several people who swear that you get ripped big time if you don't scrap things with more than one component manually. Like I said though, I haven't bothered to prove or disprove that to my own satisfaction thus far, but I scrap them manually just to be safe. I always have issues with finding things like oil...

I'm pretty sure that's been debunked. My understanding is that the spare components don't show up in the list right away, but they do get returned to the workbench, and are available for further crafting.

I hardly ever manually scrap, and I have a big piles of resources at my workbench. The only explanation is that when I'm building stuff and junk gets automatically broken down, the left over components are delivered to the bench. That makes sense because you have no control over which junk to break down for building, so good on Bethesda for covering the angles.

I play with a loot reduction and weight reduction. So i scrap and take only the necessary items with me until i find what i'm looking for (ADHESIVE, NEED MORE ADHESIVE ) so i can craft the next thing on my list.

I havent had issues with adhesive yet, but I believe you can cook something up that breaks down to Adhesive.

I would check for you but im not at home.

Everyone talks about adhesive, but personally, I've never run out. Now aluminum, on the other hand...

For me it was copper and screws, I had a habit of picking up Aluminium cans and ignoring normal ones for some reason, and I was getting close with Ceramics but making sure I collected Coffee cups resolved that problem to be

I'm using the better sorting mod, that tags parts like abraxo cleaner with a (crafting) prefix, to avoid making just that mistake. But you're right, without that mod, it'd be unwise to scrap everything without knowing what you might need later.

Where are you putting things? I know not to trust just any container, anywhere. But I've placed containers around sanctuary for my item sorting and collecting, and what I put there stays there.

And how, specifically is that done? ALL the benches share the exact same Inventory, so if you Transfer items from your Inventory into or from the bench Inventory, you can do so at any bench or station. That is, if you open the Weapons bench, you can access there Weapons, Apparel, Aid, Miscellaneous, Mods, Junk, or Ammo. EVERYTHING is held in common. The ONLY thing that says Scrap in the options is if you are in Workbench Build mode, and go to any of the other benches and activate (E) it -- in which it is the bench that is being scrapped. (You are not given the option to scrap -- or build -- the main Workbench.)

Just last night in Sanctuary, I placed all of my salables in a dresser. Then I ran off to another location to pick up a load of stuff I had stashed there. But when I got back to Sanctuary I discovered that the salable stash dresser had been replaced by a few caps and a paintbrush. Made me rather annoyed as the salables had been worth a couple thousand caps.

I'm talking about the build mode, which I think of as workbench mode. Sorry for the way I put it. What I mean is, I'd like to see that "scrap" option included in the workbench and pipboy menus.

There are a couple of benefits to manual scrapping, that I am quite confident are real.

1. The engine does not distinguish stuff you built in the settlement and scrap from stuff you carry in and scrap. Got a settlement for which the "build size" bar is yellow and you are close to being unable to build anything more?

Just drop a bunch of junk on the ground. Do two or three fully inventory loads, observe what happens with the build size bar.

The game thinks that you are reducing the amount of built items in your settlement and thus, scrapping junk loot is a way to have bigger settlements. They may change this in a patch, but I hope not.

2. Certain items are more valuable as either trade items or building items (abraxo, antifreeze bottles, cigarette packs and cartons). If you make a point of setting these aside, and also make a point of insuring that you have a large enough stockpile of the materials these break down into, then you can leave them in your workbench without much fear of them being unintentionally auto-scrapped. So what is the best way to go about keeping your stockpiles of stuff up? manually scrap everything you don't care to keep intact is the best method I've come up with.

There are other little benefits to manual scrapping that have more do do with playstyle; actually I guess both of those have to do with playstyle. If you don't care about having bigger settlements or don't care to get the biggest cap / XP / power effect out of valuable junk, then yeah, just shove it in the workbench.

But it is not that there is "no" benefit to manual scrapping. They are benefits which not everyone may appreciate.

This question has been answered for you several times in this thread. From page 2:

I've never personally has this happen. I store weapons and armour that I want to keep in the toolbox at Red Rocket, and have done since the start of the game. Nothing has disappeared from there on over 100 hours.