OK... need some advice from you guys. I fear I may have screwed this up...

I tempered it in the oven last night. Two cycles of an hour each at 425. After the first cycle, it looked fantastic. Nice straw colour, consistent throughout.

After the second cycle though:

Name:  IMG_20171211_202324.jpg
Views: 139
Size:  24.2 KB

Name:  IMG_20171211_202255.jpg
Views: 137
Size:  22.2 KB

So now I'm afraid it went too far as that's more blue than I'd like to see. So, if this was you blade, would you:

1. Normalize, re-harden, re-temper at lower temp/shorter cycle?
2. Go ahead and finish it off as-is.

The dodgy weld made itself more pronounced as you can see in the 2nd pic, and I'm concerned the strain from putting it through the hardening/tempering cycle again may be too much for the billet. So right now I'm leaning towards just proceeding with it as-is.

Other suggestions welcome!

Thanks