Hi woodtick. annealed or not an arc welder or forge wont care. As Chris Pook said heat to dull red and weld a porter bar on. By the way try to make sure that the material is nice and flat on the anvil when you hit it or the leverage created will tear your weld apart pretty quick no matter how good it was. If you have access to a grinder of some kind you might consider spark testing your material before wasting a lot of time forging down a block that size by hand. Also don't forget to leave yourself enough extra material to do some quench testing before trying to heat treat a blade of mystery steel.
Hope this helps
John
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