About our Meetings
Like many SAPFM regional chapters, the Florida chapter meets twice a year in the spring and fall. Florida Chapter members live throughout the state. Roughly 1/3 live in Central Florida, 1/3 live in Tampa-St. Pete, and 1/3 live are spread out everywhere else with no significant concentration. For this reason, our two yearly meetings are split between Orlando and Tampa.
Spring Meeting
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- Typically held in late March in the Orlando area.
- Generally, a 2-day weekend event featuring a guest speaker from an affiliate (out of state) chapter.
- The format can be either a hands-on class, or in depth demonstration of building technique centered on a specific piece of furniture (e.g. highboy) or a skill (e.g. carving, finishing).
- Since we must pay a guest speaker to travel from out of state, we charge a nominal fee for members to attend. This covers our costs. The registration fee is nominal, especially when compared to what you would pay to attend a woodworking school.
Fall Meeting
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- Typically held in late September in the Tampa area.
- Generally, a 1-day event featuring presentations by multiple local chapter members.
- Members volunteer to give a one-hour presentation on a topic of their choice related to period furniture. There are usually 3-4 presenters for the day.
- A call for presenters is email to everyone months before this meeting. We appreciate everyone who volunteers.
- There is no cost to attend this meeting.
- Visitors are welcome to attend. We hope you will find it worthwhile and join.
In addition to presentations, members are encouraged to bring in their current works to display and talk about during the ‘Show-and-Tell’ segment of the meeting. We always have interesting pieces show up, as there are many gifted furniture makers among us. Ample time is set aside for members to catch up with one another during breaks, lunch outings, and over coffee and donuts in the morning.
SAPFM chapters do not charge a separate membership fee. Membership fees are paid directly to the national organization. However, we may ‘pass the hat’ for snacks.
Meeting will be announced by email and in the quarterly ‘Pins and Tails’ newsletter well ahead of time. You can always look to this web-site for announcements. The email list we use is generated from membership data from the SAPFM.org web-site. Hence, it is important that members keep their information up to date there. All members should have a log-in. Updating your information is easy, once logged in go to: https://www.sapfm.org/update-your-profile Anyone entering the ‘Florida’ as their primary, secondary, or tertiary will receive emails about our meetings.