How possible is it to transplant hard disk platters, at least for the purposes of data recovery when a drive mechanism is otherwise physically dead?
In particular I have a 40MB 2.5" SCSI Conner HD and an old style IWM Hard Disk 20. I would imagine if it i possible, I would need working drive mechanisms to sacrifice. Once cracking the drives open, I would assume that I have basically destroyed their reliable useful life?

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Let's go back to step one.

You mention a 40 MB 2.5" SCSI drive and a 20 MB, 3.5" Rodime (proprietary) drive. Do you mean you want to swap platters between those two? Or just that you want to perform this on those two completely separately?

Assuming you mean to do it completely separately, it would be possible. But, for the love of $deity, don't sacrifice a working HD20!!! (I have two dead HD20s that I need to rip open and try to fix, but I would never even consider ripping open a known-good one in an attempt to get either of my broken ones working.)

If the information is really that valuable, pay a dedicated data recovery company to recover it.