Actually the typical traditional smith never throws away a piece of steel or iron; he may entirely re-forge it, he may alloy it with other metal to dilute properties he doesn't like, he may use tiny scraps and filings to make rust slurry for patination, but he doesn't throw iron away; in fact he buys other people's broken iron junk to use for reforging. Now, a large cold shut in a blade's core could become exposed during grinding to finish the groove (though it was likely forged in to some extent), and at that point I can easily see an old time nomad smith looking down at this huge piece of steel, made and shaped with such difficulty, and perhaps even wanted in a hurry, and deciding to repair the piece instead of reforging it. Would such action be considered of the highest ethical or artistic standards? Perhaps not, though it is a saying among craftsmen that a real craftsman isn't one who doesn't screw up, but one who knows how to fix it when he does, and it's a sliding scale; you don't start over for just any tiny error; you have to draw a line somewhere; different people in different circumstances draw different lines. I've seen blades with cold-shuts exposed by the grinding, or some at the forged surface, where no repair, filling, or concealment of any kind was undertaken; the blade was made that way, sold that way, and went out into the world that way. It's not incredibly uncommon, actually.
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