Maybe the favourable reception to old-time blades might be put down to old-time techniques. In my erstwhile career as a blacksmith, I only made the one razor just for myself, a (so-called) damascus* western kamisori. I had a limited quantity of the material available (left over from another project) so to me the obvious approach was to create the hollows primarily by fullering (forging between dies) rather than wasting metal by grinding it away into dust.
I'm reasonably sure this approach would (or IMO should) have been adopted by earlier bladesmiths, as there are clear advantages in terms of the metallurgical structure. As for the hardening/tempering techniques, those were (and are) fairly simple if you know what you're doing with individual blades. As soon as you introduce more modern mass-production techniques, you will almost certainly come across quality control issues.
* I really prefer the term "pattern-welded" to "damascus". The latter was originally a crucible steel, not forge-welded at all.