Claudio Barros Lopes does stonework, stonemasonry, domestic refurbishments and sculpture work.

The stone he uses most, in addition to taco limestone, is granite dressed into ashlars for corners, doors and windows, or in the form of smaller blocks, in dry-stone walling or layered courses of stonework.… He always seeks to work in the most traditional way possible. Thus he bush-hammers stones by hand rather than with a pneumatic hammer, rough-cuts stone in preference to angle-grinding, shapes stones seeking their four corners before hacking off protrusions, fits tranqueiro and agulla bracing stones by doors and windows, etc.

As to tools, in masonry work he avoids angle grinders as far as possible (which also spares him the associated dust and noise), preferring hammers, mallets and point chisels for roughing and an escoda, a sort of hammer with a square head on one side and a blade on the other, for shaping cachotes, i.e. small stones.

For sculpture work, Claudio makes use of pneumatic drills, angle grinders and other roughing devices, normally working on demand. Once the block for the sculpture has been cut, he carves directly, by points or to scale.