Some background on this project:

I lost my set of cooking knives in a restaurant fire. I couldn't afford to buy new ones. 
I set out to make a knife out of materials I had.

Missed a step in preparing the blade for heat treatment. The metal had "memories" that took shape as a massive warp after quenching. 

First major mistake in the project, caused me to doubt the use of free materials. 

Cracked the blade while attempting to undo the warp caused by the heating and quenching process. 

At this point I decided I could not verify the quality of the metal used and decided to invest in materials from a knife making website. 

Research on heat treating stainless steel revealed that I want to air cool the knife instead of quenching it in liquids such as oil or water. 

Testing out methods to hold the hot piece after it is removed from the kiln. The fork proved to be inadequate. 

The kiln did not have a thermo-regulator, instead firing cones were used to judge the approximate temperatures reached. 

In attempts to straighten the warp from the heat treating process, I snapped the handle off at the base. A very tough day at the shop emotionally. 

Fortunately, my friend had a high quality welder in addition to his plasma cutter. I practiced a few passes on the scraps the knife blank was cut from. 

Not shown: After welding, the blade had to go through the heat treating and tempering processes again. 

Gap created by tapering the thickness of the blade. The slabs have to be tapered to match.