I've spent the past few days combing through guides, posts, and wiki entries trying to figure out how Component Quality effects Item Durability and I've found absolute nothing useful other than Quality effects stats in tiers of 5, (15 Quality Crossbow does 13 - 20 Damage, 20 Quality Crossbow does 14 - 22 damage, etc)
At first I thought "Maybe it's the component's quality times 10" i.e. a 50 Quality frame would lead to a 500 Durability pistol, but then I checked the wiki and saw that the 50 quality example they use for all weapons has 690 Durability, so that was a bust. I don't need any help with effective skill totals for crafting or anything else, I just want to know how to spot if a component is going to produce something better than what I've already found via scavenging. Something like this should really, really be on the wiki. ^^;
EDIT: After some experimentation and Rathound hunting I think I've had a breakthrough: Durability seems to change by 60 points when the Quality of an item is in ranges of 5 (5-10, 10-15, 15-20, etc.) I tested this idea by making some leather armor out of a few Rathounds using 25 Tailoring (29 Effective) and the results were everything I hoped for!
14 Quality Rathound Leather = 180 Durability
17 Quality Rathound Leather = 240 Durability
19 Quality Rathound Leather = 240 Durability
21 Quality Rathound Leather = 300 Durability
22 Quality Rathound Leather = 300 Durability
32 Quality Rathound Leather = 420 Durability
34 Quality Rathound Leather = 420 Durability
