What you're doing for heat treating right now isn't heat treating at all. It would be a tempering cycle if you had done a heat treating cycle. But, as Doug explained, weld steel and lawn mower blades wouldn't respond well to heat treating anyway.
I don't know why you think good steel will cost you $100 unless maybe you're not in the USA. Fill out your profile so we don't have to guess. If you are in the USA we can point you to steel sources for much less than $100 ...
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