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ABOUT WALTER SORRELLS

I have two jobs.  In the morning, I write suspense novels.   I guess you could call that my day job.  (You can find out more about that at my web site waltersorrells.com).  In the afternoon I turn into a bladesmith.

I began making knives by the stock removal method in the late '90s and then began forging a few years later.  Once I began forging, I turned almost exclusively to making Japanese style blades.

I've been a martial artist for over a decade and a half, with experience in a number of Japanese sword arts.  I bring that experience to my bladesmithing.  Also, while I'm not a collector of Japanese swords, I have studied them fairly extensively.  I don't pretend to make "Japanese swords."  Rather I make modern swords which are inspired by the Japanese martial arts, and by the Japanese sword-making tradition. 

Just to give you a little more information on my martial arts background, I began studying Motobu-ha Shito-ryu karate over fifteen years ago.   (I'm currently a san-dan or third degree black belt, if that sort of thing interests you.) The curriculum in our karate dojo includes Mugai-ryu Iaido -- a Japanese sword-drawing style.  While I continue to practice iaido to this day, I consider my instruction in Mugai-ryu to be fairly superficial.   I have cross-trained for a couple of years in Aikido.  My aikido training has included aiki-ken, the sword partner practice which is a small part of aikido training.  Again, my training there was quite superficial. 

Finally, a little over half a decade ago, I began studying Shinkendo, a modern Japanese sword art developed by Kaiso Toshishiro Obata.  I trained in Shinkendo for about six or seven years, reaching the rank of hyaku-e -- which means nothing to anybody outside Shinkendo, but it's a sort of middling rank in the art, vaguely equivalent to a low black belt rank.  Shinkendo practice includes tameshigiri  (test cutting) in its curriculum, and live blades are used extensively, not just in cutting but in drawing and kata practice as well.

I don't mean to bore you with all the martial arts stuff except by way of saying that I bring a fair amount of real-world sword training to my bladesmithing.  Through practical training, I've come to hold distinct ideas about what a sword should be like.   As I continue to train, to study and to forge swords, of course, those ideas continue to evolve.