Smelting bars is the only way to do it until you can make rune stuff, just buy ores for steel or mith and smelt away. Mith is the fastest smelting exp, because you can do 5 mith bars and a steel bar per trip to the furnace. So just buy coal, mith, and iron ores, and smelt away. Your profits will be small, but you won't lose any money, and you can sell the bars to buy more to keep the cycle going for more smithing exp. Mining your own ores is NOT a way to make money smithing. The profit there comes from mining.