Bronze burnout

So I've defeated the first boss, and now I'm able to mine copper and tin. In my base I have the forge, and I've built the buildings for smelting and creating coal. Now I should upgrade my tools to bronze, and create other bronze stuff. For this, a lot of bronze is needed. The issue I have is that it's really slow and repetative to get it. Mining copper fills my weight really fast, so I have to run back and forth between my base and copper ore deposites a lot. This is really boring, and makes progressing in this phase really slow. I was happy for a bit when I got portals, but then discovered that you cant use them when you have copper on you. I've also found out that you can increase the weight you can carry by buying an item from a merchant, but I haven't found him on the island that I started on, so I guess I need to build a ship to sail to another one.

Has anybody else felt that this part of the game is slow and borring? Does it get better? Even if it does get better, I think the devs should make some changes to speed up progressing through this part, or make it more fun.