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Anchor chain was made of wrought iron and sometimes had cast iron reinforcements, neither of which make good cutting tools.

Wrought iron is used as the main body of many Japanese knives, but the...

I don't think there are any japanese razors being made of Tamahagane (is that what you meant by ball steel?), if it were made of Tamahagane, they would make sure to tell you.

Yep, pretty much.

The alloying elements play a small role in grain size, but mostly it's grain refinement via thermal cycling that makes the biggest difference in the resulting edge quality.
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Japanese steel is also, generally, more pure than the western varieties.

As for smaller crystals, the metallurgical processes that create smaller crystals in the steel's microstructure can be...

Who was your first source, I didn't see it on a quick scan through the thread.

I think one of the problems that we are running into here is a difference in argument, i.e. whether it was intended...

I didn't intend that to be a chastising post, I just like to keep all things as objective as possible until a definitive answer is presented for this mysterious (and oh so appealing) style of razor....

But to be fair, many people believed the myth in question (myself included, for a long time), and it had to have come from somewhere so it's not like Bigspendur is making it up. We've all just been...