Well, actually, there is a sliding scale for how difficult it can be. The more experience and knowledge you gather, the more things get complicated.

But at first it is simple -- just you and the blank locked in a struggle to whittle out something resembling a surfboard. And guess what? No matter how your first board turns out, it'll work just fine, and you will someday look back on it -- a thousand boards later, perhaps -- with the same fondness that you would recall a first romance and with the same distortion of its merits that such nostalgic vantage points bring.

Anyone can shape a surfboard -- but not every shaper can shape the surfboard he set out to create based on the exacting blueprint of the mind's eye. How quickly the novice shaper progresses to the stage where he has a certain degree of control over the blank depends on a few attributes you bring with you before you ever heft a power planer. I'll narrow these down to three basic factors that help enormously when one takes up shaping:

1. Time spent in the shaping room watching other shapers at work

2. Some aptitude and familiarity with basic tools

3. Better than average powers of visualization