Heat doesn't hurt a heat treated blade as long as you keep it within the range the blade was drawn to originally. Bearing in mind these low tech blades were probably made from something like spring steel and drawn to a blue, as long as you're within that heat range, you're not doing any harm. There's another thing too:- a lot of these sort of blades were not hardened and drawn all the way up to the tang. If you etch the blade you can see where the hardening has occurred, and more often than not its along the edge, and tapers off completely before it gets up to what would be the ricasso area. In practical use terms, this makes a lot of sense.
An easy stand for an upright soaking container is a box of sand---cardboard box, put some sand into it, or even earth if you don't have sand, and sit the pipe upright in the sand.
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