So, I've begun a new character, and I've decided I'd not bother grinding Smithing before I went to use the almighty fortify Restoration Loop and make some fortify Smithing potions. Normally, I just grind up Smithing, but didn't want to waste the extra time grinding, so assumed I could simply make a powerful fortify Smithing potion with the Loop and that'd get me where I wanted to go without leveling Smithing at all.

Well, silly me--for some unknown reason, the potions are ineffective. Instead of turning those leather boots into legendary leather boots, all I could smith to was flawless quality. I tried putting a few levels in Smithing, getting the Steel Smithing perk, and going at it again, but only could smith to epic quality--and this is with a fortify Smithing potion of about <1500% in magnitude.

Is it just a mathematical problem, and it's due to my Smithing not being high enough and/or my potions not being strong enough, or did I not do something I normally do but have not realized, yet--or has something changed via a patch that I'm not aware of?

Nothing has changed with the patches, sounds like you got your smithing potion up good and high, however, with leather/iron there isn't an actual perk for those and I've found one has to max smithing to be able to get those up to legendary. That's at least been my experience. Cheers!

Ah, figures--I hadn't thought of that. Both my other characters were ground to 100 in Smithing prior to resto-looping. I had assumed that extra potion strength would have overridden that.

Blah--I hate grinding Smithing, but I suppose there's nothing for it...

Why grind...level naturally ?

I only have a small amount of time to play, when I actually get the chance to play. Natural leveling simply takes too long, and the fun goes out the window for me if I have to dink around scraping materials together and gain a level once every few days or so.

If I were on PC, I'd just console in what I needed and get on with the quests, and actually enjoy the game. I have enough problems and labors in real life that when I fire up Skyrim, I want it to be relaxing and fun, not yet another difficult chore. That's part of why I exploit certain glitches.

If you're willing to cheese it, you can level smithing to 100 from a potion with percentages in the 7 digits.

Hey, good point--much like how selling uber-expensive items nets big Speechcraft XP in a hurry.