[rotorwrench]

It certainly did not hurt to use all the resources available at the time. Ford used scrap iron/steel on a regular basis as a part of the smelt during the process of making their iron and steel even before the war. Some was generated by the "in house" manufacturing processes and some was purchased prior to the war. During the war, the War Department had a lot to do with the materials that were utilized by all the manufacturers of the necessary items needed to fight the enemy. The War Department set up the national War Production Board which worked hand in hand with state production boards to allocate all the resources. They say that the scrap metal drive in October of 1942 resulted in a gain of 82 pounds of scrap metal for every person in the United States. That's a lot of scrap. These drives went on throughout the war. Cooking oil was saved by most american homes and was brought to the state board locations to be used in the manufacture of explosives. Everything was tightly rationed so as not to use too much of the limited resources available to keep the industrial and agricultural products flowing where they needed to get for both worker and soldier alike.