There aren't many other people who hand-build American period furniture to exacting standards — their own. SAPFM chapters are how you can meet the ones near you. Each chapter meets as it can: in private shops, partner-guild facilities, museum back-of-house spaces. Twenty-two regional groups meet two to four times a year. All twenty-two are part of your membership.
You drive in. There's coffee. Eight or fifteen members are unwrapping pieces from blanket-wrapped boards — show-and-tell is the standing opener at every chapter meeting in the country. Then the featured presentation: a member walking the room through his recent build, or a visiting instructor on a particular technique. Lunch — sandwiches, ten or fifteen dollars in. After lunch: a second presentation, a tour of the host's shop, a swap meet where members bring planes and chisels to sell or trade. Drive home around dinner.
The texture changes by chapter. Some host fifty members at a partner woodworking school's facility; others meet around a single workbench in someone's basement. SoCal does three-day workshops at Palomar College. Chesapeake and Delaware Valley have met jointly at Hearne Hardwoods every fall for the better part of a decade. In spring 2026, Ohio River Valley spent a Saturday at a member's Caldwell, Ohio shop on Revolutionary War campaign furniture.
Woodcraft of Alpharetta · Alpharetta, GA
Finishing, front to back: John Ogilvie on finishing problems and repairs, Marion Smith on shellac, and Nick Cook on turning for furniture makers. Friday evening, a remembrance for Ronnie Young, open to all. Dinner sign-up closes October 14.
Chapter meetings appear here as leads post them. Find your chapter below for its forum and contact.
Pick the chapter closest to where you live and open its page from the twenty-two above — each chapter's page lists its lead and a contact address. Email the lead, say you're a maker thinking about joining, and ask when the next meeting is.
Most chapters welcome a first-time guest before any membership decision. Show up with a piece of work to talk about, or just show up. Lunch is usually ten or fifteen dollars in. The membership pitch happens naturally over the day, or it doesn't. Either way you've spent a Saturday with people whose company you'll either want more of or won't.
And if the map is quiet where you live, start the twenty-third.
The other people doing this. There aren't that many of them.
