You will probably need obsidian dust for the first time to make alumite dust in Steam Tier 
Instead of macerating obsidian blocks, use alloy smelter to get 9 obsidian ingots from a single block, then macerate the ingots.
#Macerate obsidian ingots to get obsidian dust
grizzled glacier
naive bridge
next update: Obisdian ingots only give tiny piles of obsidian 
gaunt island
Next update the chance get tiny pile from ingot set to 0.00001%
quiet vessel
thank you for this, saved me so much obby making BC tanks
swift idol
...well this will help with dense obsidian plates. damn.