I understand the OP's interest in recycling old razors, but it's the application side of things that are the tough stuff. The majority of my frustrations have come from "unknown" steels and experimentation...but that's how I'm programmed I guess. It is much easier to work with known steels & guess what? Mike Blue & others like Butch, Bruno & Charlie made that recommendation to me when I was getting starting working with steel. They said to stick with the simple steels like 0-1 & 1095. It really is cheaper to stick with known steels if you consider time & fuel alone.