Íñigo Trápaga’s trade is structural carpentry: making bespoke roofs, floors, trusses, decking and also furniture. He inherited the craft from two previous generations of carpenters. And with the internet he has been able to enlarge his expertise, especially with techniques from the Americas and of… Anglo-Saxon tradition.

He works in a wholly artisan way, using electric machines and also hand tools for jointing: various chisels, hand planes and mallets. The reason for using hand tools is that they enable joints and assemblies to be fitted more closely, almost to the millimetre. Other tools he uses are squares, rulers, a plumb line or Japanese saws. He works with a wide range of woods: laminate, oak, red cypress, cedar, chestnut, ash, acacia.

The joints he makes are always the traditional ones of structural woodwork, such as mortise and tenon or dovetail. At the foot of pillars he uses base stones, secured to the timber with a square socket in the stone and a tongue in the wood.