Not only less wealthy countries Tim. I was trained in blacksmithing by a gentleman named Gordon Blackwell, he was one of the last smiths to have served an apprenticeship under a traditional, rural blacksmith, he came out of his time in 1947. He billed himself as Äustralia's Last Traditional Blacksmith", & he may well have been.
In any case what he taught me amongst other things was the types of recycled steel objects that could be used to make the various types of tools that smiths used to be required to make.
For example, when my dad was building our house in an outlying suburb of Sydney in 1947-'48, he needed a spud bar --- some people call these a crow bar, which they are not, about 5'long, one end is a chisel shape, the other end has 2"disc of steel welded to it, you use the chisel end to dig a post hole, & the disc end to tamp the fill soil around the post.
Australia after WWII was pretty badly supplied in a lot of things, & it was not possible to buy a 40 or 50 pound spud bar from a hardware shop, dad got his bar made by the local blacksmith. I've still got it, it works well. But here's the point:- it was made from a truck axle.
You can take the ugliest old rusted piece of steel & turn it into something usable.
In Central Jawa the smiths living in a particular area near Jogjakarta were digging up graves in order to source weapons & tools that had been buried with the people who had died, this was during the 1980's, but I have been told it had been going on for years. When those old tools came out of the grave they were very heavily encased in rust, but they would take a few items that had been cleaned in the fire, weld them together and make a new working blade from it.
The smiths in Madura & East Jawa use various parts of bicycles as a source of material.
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