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When you bring it up to weld temperature the grain structure will change. After welding it, you will need to heat treat it and the grain will change again - hopefully to small, fine grain. Then you...

That grain structure screams bad heat treatment and normalizing.

After seeing that, forget icing the blade it needs to be re heat treated anyway. Weld the handle on however you want, clean up the...

Since I weld a lot, I would probably try and weld the two pieces back together again, clean up the weld, and re heat treat the blade.