Hermanos Cid is a carpentry firm in the village of Las Ventas con Peña Aguilera (Toledo province), made up of Hilario and Jesús Cid. They have over 50 years’ experience of working manually with craft woodworking techniques.

Their huge output over the years encompasses a great… range of categories, from exterior and interior doors and windows to reproductions and restorations of antique furniture. While their speciality is the building of wooden roofs, given the large number of stately historic houses remaining in Toledo province, over the years they have restored countless architectural elements and furnishings.

They work with traditional techniques involving chisels for mortising and jointing, handsaws for cutting and planes for finishes. They once used other traditional techniques and tools such as a seula cutter for smoothing wood surfaces, a rebate plane for recessed edges and flush doors, or a shoulder plane for smoothing longer pieces. Today these devices have been replaced by power tools allowing work to be done more quickly and with less physical effort.

The wood they have worked with most is Scots pine, although in recent years they have also used Oregon pine and red pine. Pinewood was worked traditionally with the resin inside, making it sturdier and more durable. Today the resin is extracted for use in varnishes. Accordingly, for exterior woodwork, pinewood is being replaced by other imported woods that give better service, such as iroko or amburana.