What does it take to ride that wave?
Where does the buoyancy that saves a life come from?
How can I carve a smooth curve that flows with the tilt of the Earth?

To truly understand, I must relive the greatness of those who came before me.

If that means cutting thousands of outlines by hand,
if it means walking tens of thousands of steps around the board with a planer in hand, then so be it.

I’ll grind the blank down to the rough cut limits, using nothing but the weight of the planer and the machine’s rigid line.

Then I’ll switch to hand tools—planers and blocks—
shaping every expressive line clean and pure.
From that grid of fine lines, the curves will emerge.

And everything will connect.

That’s what shaping is repeating this process again and again.

But...

To shape the form I imagine
To translate the image from my mind into physical lines, using nothing but the electrical signals between brain and hand.
To repeat this until I can freely control and shape those lines into my own creation.

Only someone who has walked that long, winding shortcut with no end in sight...

can truly be called a shaper.

When I realized that...

The only thing I felt was gratitude.
Gratitude for the world-class masters who gave me the real thing who taught me what’s true.

That’s why I can retrace the steps of the pioneers.
That’s why I can live the same experience they once lived.