I came across this claim in a deposition this morning in which the deponent stated that a ship he once served on was (paraphrasing but accurate representation) "sold to Gillette and they turned it into razor blades and ruined the whole thing."
It's such a bizarre - yet potentially viable - claim that it immediately piqued my interest. I spent a while Googling for some actual proof but have only found anecdotal evidence so far. The Snopes post is okay, but since I don't trust message boards with 404'd military buff fan sites, rabbit hole comments, and credentials that include a signature with animated emojis, I'm hoping to get a qualified answer.
In that link, it's claimed that "turned into razor blades" is Naval jargon for being decommissioned or scuttled, which seems plausible. But I found it strange that in a legal transcript, the deponent was oddly specific referencing Gillette in what doesn't t seem to be a cheeky remark. I was also very surprised that searching reddit for variations of this phrase yielded no relevant posts.
The navy has been scrapping (dismantling and selling) ships for many, many years. Generally, a middleman would handle this: the ship would be towed to a breaker's yard, broken down into scrap metal, the metal recycled, and then sold to whomever needed it. If the navy did sell steel to Gillette, it was with one or two degrees of separation.
Over at /r/warshipporn, I once made a joke about the sad fate of the USS Enterprise.
Nobody got it.
Can't say anything about the US Navy but you can get knifes made from dismantled German Leopard 1 tanks. Just google "leopard tank knife" or "leopard panzer messer" and you will get a lot of vendors.
So I'd say it isn't that hard to believe that the military sells scrap metal from old machinery to non-military companies.