Juan Agustín Padrón Pérez’s trade is the restoration of heritage woodwork. What he does is mostly traditional carpentry, chiefly restorations of woodwork in the doors, windows, balconies, floors and roofs of traditional Canary Island houses, as well as in windmills and water-pumping salt mills. He… also makes furniture and does wood carvings.

The techniques he uses are those of traditional carpentry – working wood with the aid of machines and manual tools.

His work process remains the same as that applied traditionally in carpentry. The first step in any job, whether a roof structure, windmill or doors and windows, is to take measurements in situ. He then makes full-scale templates and gathers materials as required. The timber is planed, marked, jointed and assembled in the workshop and then installed on site. Finally he applies treatments and a final finish.

In restoration jobs he seeks to use timber salvaged from the worksite, reinforcing and treating it so as to retain as many original parts as possible.

The woods used most often in his workshop are those readily available in the market on the island, such as iroko, tatajuba, Brazilian cherry, sapele, afzelia, Scots pine or Canary pine.

Juan Agustín has needed to update few aspects of his work processes, and most of them are much like those of former times. He uses manual tools: scratch gauges, squares, hacksaws, chisels, planes, spokeshaves, wooden mallets or hammers, and power tools such as sanders, power saws, drills, etc. For dimensioning, drawings and scale templates he finds computer software useful.