Not sure if I like the idea. If you made your own paper money at home, you'd not exactly be "helping the economy", right?
There are players who are willing to buy materials. I'd rather encourage you to trade with them than craft caps from the mats.
I do remember that in New Vegas there's a quest to destroy a machine used to create non-official bottle caps, because that was hurting the economy of the NCR.Still, if there was a new "TCable" location, say a Nuka Cola factory, which featured machines you could make Bottle Caps with, and factions could fight over it, that'd be nice.
I dont like the idea of making caps craftable because it's too easy to exploit this with alts doing nothing else but standing in front of benches all day. It's very simple to find gear as a new player. Collect brock flowers and xander root till your gathering is maxed and make weak healing powders. Alot of vendors give 40 caps a piece for these small and easy to make items. In 5 minutes you can easily make over 3k worth in weak powders which you can use to trade for anything you need. I dont get why everyone is always so stuck on caps. Trade items for items and you dont need caps all that much in the beginning. Later on when your character is stronger you can go wherever you want and easily find caps for the things you need in the later portion of the game.
The reason why they were chosen as official wasteland money is that the technology needed to manufacture bottle caps and paint them has been lost during the Great War, which limits the number of bottle caps that would appear in the world. That limited number also ensures to preserve their value.
we should be using golden coins already not some stinky old bottle caps!
BLASPHEMY!11