[Regrowth] Any not-godawful way to get aluminum/metal tools?

A friend and I are playing Regrowth and we're setting up operations in the Spirit World. However, without aluminum it's kind of impossible to make casts to make metal tools--but we need copper pickaxes to mine aluminum. I've been investigating options but it seems the only way I could get ahold of any aluminum or other metal is by grinding the earlygame Essence quests to get ore/seeds; however, this seems incredibly grindy and reeks of poor design so I really feel like I'm missing something. If I'm not then I may as well just smuggle items in through various methods but I'd really prefer to do it the legit way if it's not just grinding resources. Anyone know the "right" way to do it?