Armour Crafting in AOC

I'm just about to hit level 57 in Age of Conan and have only just decided to take up Armour Crafting despite that I read on the official forums it's hard work gathering some of the resources.  Various kinds of leather being the main ones.  I could have started crafting at level 40 but couldn't decide what I wanted to do...lol.

I think it will come in useful though as I can, if they want it, supply my guild with any armour they may need as self crafted armour is much better than you get in drops and has gem slots.  Other than that I can sell it but it probably wouldn't be very lucrative considering there's probably a large number of others doing the same thing.  I mainly want it for my own use, for my guild and basically just the experience to try it out even if gathering resources is a bit of a grind sometimes.  

It was either that or weapon smithing, but armour is probably more useful.  I can buy or trade rare weapons (or anything else) from the Trader screen where players put them up for sale, and I've sold a few things myself that way, but I wanted to try another trade so I chose armour.  There's also the option to trade player to player directly so there are plenty of ways to do things.

I'm already an Alchemist so as long as I can get the ingredients, I can supply my own potions.   In the early levels up to around level 40 or so, I never bought anything from merchants and relied solely on drops (except for Epic and very rare ones I assume), because I was saving for my horse, but now I have one and have reached higher levels I'm finding a stock of potions is heavily required to survive.  

Most ingredients for all crafts can be purchased from merchants, but there are very rare ones that need to be found via quests or taken off the cold, dead bodies of enemies.   The most used recipes come from trainers, but there are also rare ones that are drops from bosses or I believe can be bought and sold from other players at the Trader screen. 

There's so much to do and learn in this game and I'm still only Free to Play which I hope to remedy in a couple of months.  I'm still a MMO newbie...lol.