1. I mainly do Tailoring BODs, but actually do more Smith BOD runs (6 smith runners, 4 tailor runners). This is a bit misleading, because I keep 90% of the tailor BODS, and throw away 90% of the smith BODs.
This is because it is easy to get the stuff to fill the cloth BODs. In fact, one can be self-sustainable filling EX Cloth smalls (and the surcoat, bonnet, sash and full apron normals) using cloth from turning in smalls, and using the gold from those BODs to purchase the rest of the normal items to fill the normal BODs.
Smith BODs, on the other hand...
50/50 iron/colored * 50/50 weapon/armor * 11/13 non-combinable/combinable means that well over EIGHTY PERCENT of the BODs are junk (less than 15% are combinable colored BODs, or even irons that have a chance at giving powder or a colored anvil), before factoring in just how many of the colored larges give crap rewards too. And, unlike tailoring, your rewards don't supply raw material AND must be done in a place with forge and anvil - or at least fire beetle and Anvil (I tested this at the anvil without forge outside Britain). Tailoring, you can work anywhere - even filling leather BODs AS YOU HUNT, insuring that you never lose materal from deaths while resource gathering, since BODs are blessed.
Only 33 (36 if you count 120 PS, that you typically will only need one of with your smith) of the Armor Larges Iron through Bronze give moderately decent rewards (and that's if you consider a bronze runic, 20% chance of POF or a 10% CHANCE of a colored anvil "good") - that's out of NINETY larges. And those are a small fraction of the possibles. (add in weapons, you get 5 20% powder & 1 90% Powder BODs, out of 30 more Larges)
I'll go into this more after answering #3.
2.
A. too hard to get
i. any Hammer Gold and above,
ii.+30 ASH, +60 ASH.
iii. It would also be nice To have better alternates for the 90% that isn't a colored anvil (which should be hard to get) than a crappy PS and an even crappier hammer. Say, moving it to be a choice between a 120 PS or an Anvil, with the weighting varying whether or not you are scrolled to 120 already (say 80/20 in favor of PS if not scrolled, 80/20 in favor of Anvil or other deco item to be added later if the game detects you are already scrolled to 120).
B.Too Easy to get:
i. Prospector Tools (having a 4/1 ratio of Garg pick to prospector tools would be better as that's about how many garg picks a PT is good for)
ii. POF (IMO, you should drop the +10 ASH to the POF position, the +15 to the current +10 level, then put the POF into the reward position currently occupied by the +15 ASH - if not the +30!
iii. power scrolls under 120 for BOTH skills.
iv. BARBED KITS. (see after #3. for elaboration)
v. CBDs.
C. The most Useful - Answer: Barbed kits, POF and all the smith rewards most of us only get to use on TC.
D. The least useful
i. Streched hides
ii. PS under 120 (especially Tailor - one can get a 120 PS from two LEATHER LBODs!!!)
iii. Spined kits (at least one can try to make slayers with DC hammers!)
3.
a. Typically, I try to collect 12-18 Smith and 8-12 tailor BODs on days I don't work, 6 smith & 4 tailor on the days I do.
b. After 3-5 weeks, when I have accumulated 100 cloth BODs to fill in order to get new ones, and about 30 tailoring BODs I know I want to keep and 30 colored smith combinable BODs to check to see if I need (80% of which I turn out not needing), and about half as manay that have a POF chance, I make an accounting.
c I fill all the cloth BODs, turn in one at a time to get new ones, sort those BODs, throw out those I won't fill (about 10%), stick those I want to keep into my tailor sorting book (about 20%), then fill the 70% that remain (which are mostly cloth, but a few leathers with pitiful rewards as well).
d. Redo the new tailor BODs over and over (adding new BOD runs' results) for 1-3 days until I'm left with about 100 keeper tailor BODs to sort, and none to cycle, plus the 30 or so smith BODs.
e. sort the BODs, assemble completed sets, fill the sets and the stand-alone POF chance BODs for their rewards. (I just did this in the last week, BTW)
So, in a given month, I'll probably turn in about 3-4 large smith BODs and 20 smalls, and 5-10 Tailor Larges, but about 300-500 tailor smalls, in the quest to get more barbed kit BODs, through easy cycling.
Now, for that elaboration.
Consider this....
Number of Smith BODs
5 Weapon larges x 6 for the different count/quality combinations: 30 larges
3 Armor larges x6 for count/quality, x 9 for metals = 162 larges
That's 192 large BODs - FOUR give the top two Runic rewards, and the chance of them spawning is miniscule due to the fact they are Verite and valorite
Small BOD chance for one of these.
1/2 (weapon/armor split) * 1/4 (plate, if armor) * 1/2 (has to be Exceptional) = 1/16.
1/16 * chance of being Valorite or Verite (assuming 4.2%, which is chance of Verite + chance for Valorite, when mining an area for the first time - which I think is considerably higher than the BOD metal type chances, but at least I could find it to work with...) = 42/1000 * 1/16 = 21/8000 = 0.2625%
0.2625% * 92% (chance of it being a small BOD) = 0.2415%, or less than 1 in 400 chance of a Verite hammer or Valorite Hammer small
Chance of a large is 8% * 0.5 (to get the weapons/armor split) * 0.5 (Iron/colored) * 4/144 = (0.08 * 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.02) * 1/36 = 1/50 * 1/36 = 1/1800 chance of getting a large for these hammers.
Note that, since there are 4 larges, and each of the smalls will fit only one of them, if you get ONE large, there's only a 25% chance that any smalls you get that fall into that 0.2415% chance will be one of those FOR your large, so that effectively reduces that 0.2415% to 0.0604%, and you've got to hit THAT lottery SIX times without a repeat to fill it.
There are a total of
(2+5+6+6+6) * 6 = 150 small weapons BODS
11 * 6 = 66 Iron famer BODs (fall under Armor branch of decision tree)
13 * 6 = 78 Iron combinable armor smalls
66 * 8 = 528 famer colored BODs
78 * 8 = 624 Combinable colored small BODs
That's 150+66+78+528+624 = 1446 possible Smith small BODs - and only TWENTY-FOUR of them go toward the highest smith rewards.
Now, compare to Tailoring, and the chance to get a barbed kit (the equivalent of Verite/Valorite Hammer)
# of tailor BODs
LBODs: 9 cloth, 5 regular leather, 4 each colored leather (since the colored footwear no longer spawn) * 6 = 156 Larges. (54 cloth, 30 leather, 72 colored leather)
Smalls:
(7x3 + 2x4) cloth smalls x 6 = 29*6 = 174
(4+5+5+6+6) leather smalls x 6 = 26*6 = 156
(5+5+6+6) x 3 colored leather smalls x 6 = 22*3*6 = 22*18 = 396
174+156+396 = 726 Possible Tailor smalls; that's half as many as there are smith BODs.
Now, how many of these fit Larges for Barbed Kits???
Of the 156 larges, 2 Spined Larges (the two 6-count 20 EX), 6 Horned Larges (all 3 EX larges for both 6-parts) and TEN Barbed Larges (All EX 6-parts, both 20 Normal 6-parts, and both 20 Ex 5-parts) give a Barbed Kit Reward. That's 18/156, which reduces to 3/26 or over 11.5% of the LARGES!!!! Compare that to 1/48 of the Smith larges!
Furthermore, Spined BODs are at best only as difficult to get as shadow Iron Smith BODs, Horned about as difficult as bronze, amd Barbed about as difficult as Agapite.
Now, out of those 726 small, look how many fit a Barbed Kit-prodcing Large...
16*6 (16 of the larges are 6 parter) + 2*5 (Bone Barbed 20 EX and Studded Barbed 20 EX) 96+10 = 106
106/726 = 14.6% or APPROXIMATELY ONE IN SEVEN TAILOR BODS!
Compare that to 24/1446 for Smiths! Then take into account that ALL of those 106 spawn many times more likely than a Verite or Valorite small.
Smith BOD chance for the higher metals need increased severely, and the number of BODs for the higher rewards need increased as well.
A good set of initial steps would be
1. Eliminate DC-Copper Hammers, and the ASH +15.
a. Make Bronze Hammers the lowest, where DC now occur, with 45 uses
b. Replace Shadows with Gold with 35 uses
c. Replace Coppers with +30 ASH (but reduce the uses).
d. Make the spots where +15 ASH and Bronze Hammers currently spawn the Agapite hammer slots (keep uses at 25)
e. Make the current +30 ASH slots, +60 ASH (but reduce the uses)
f. the current Gold and Agapite slots the new Verite slots, and the current ASH +60, Verite and Valorite slots become the new Valorite spots.
2. Move all the "Famer" BODs from the "Armor" side of the decision tree to the "weapon" side. This will give a "color" result meaning for that side of the tree, and insure that you will get a combinable if the tree goes to the armor side. Just this step alone will halve the number of weapon BODs junked, and double the occurance of combinable colored armor BODs.
Thank you for reading this. I think the half of my persona (the math teaching major that dropped out of college from health issues) escaped his confinement....
I'm just a newish player, and a very casual BOD collector, BOD "runner" is not really a term I'd use for myself 
