1. Sickles are easy to find. It's just that its rare to find one that's max damage. It has a pretty cool skin too. Also, one of the new greens, have the same skin as the sickle.
2. You can only salvage one mod off an item. Sometimes its neither of the mods; in that case you get iron ingots or wood planks or whatever.
It would be nice if you could salvage both things off weapons..When you salvage something just hope for the best, I have salvaged a few things and just got wood out of it.
Actually Max damage sickles do exist in game. Someone posted one on the price check forum on Friday. It was green and had no inherent mod, but it was max damage.