Crafting needs balancing.

[manipura]

Instead of RPing that I broke everything into tiny bits, sometimes I RP that I managed to make whatever it is, but it sucks and is malformed somehow, so I throw it away. But I suck HARD at crafting RP so I'm probably not the one to listen to here.

I do a lot of crafting.  I do this sort of thing sometimes.  Instead of the piece of bone just erupting into some explosion of splinters, I RP something being wrong with the material and the finished product not being good enough, or too much of it breaking for me to be able to salvage the rest of it or the part of the material that shattered sent a crack through the rest of it making it a section of bone I really don't want to make a sword out of anymore.  That sort of thing.

Since it's a roleplaying game I think there can be a bit of freedom in interpreting -how- you play out failing your crafting attempt.  
'You shatter the bone' doesn't necessarily mean that the bone busts into a zillion pieces, but it implies you ruined enough of the material that nothing was salvaged.  And while it's likely realistic that those crafting fails would give me a bunch of bone shards instead of 100 percent wasted materials...no, the last thing I want is the game world littered with dozens of leftover crafting fails that aren't useful.  It already frustrates me when people leave shit around instead of either junking it or at least arranging it before they leave it laying around.

Edit: My dad is what you would call a craftsman.  He has been for a good number of years.  Despite his skill, sometimes things just don't work in his favor.  Sometimes he's having an off day, sometimes there's something wrong with the materials he's working with, whatever the case, just because his skill is masterful doesn't mean there aren't times when he doesn't absolutely fail at something.