Reply To: Cherry side table progress, advice welcomed
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Assembly Questions
With all the mortise and tenon joints done, it’s time to tackle the thing I’m still not totally certain about – attaching the shelves to the leg frame.
First, the top. For the bench stool project, Paul uses screws to attach some pieces of wood to the underside of the seat and then screws them to the top rails. I decided to try the same concept for my stool, but using walnut dowel pins glued in place instead of metal screws. It seems to be holding up just fine so far, so I think it will work for the side table. The top rails of the table are wide enough that I can safely put 1/4″ dowels through them, so I don’t think I even need the cleats or whatever they’re called. If anyone can think of a weakness or downside to this, please let me know!
The lower shelf is the one I’m really not sure about. I settled on having two lower rails, left and right sides of the table, with the lower shelf spanning across them and the chamfered edge of the shelf overhanging a bit. The question is, how should I actually secure the shelf to the rails and/or legs while allowing for the wood to move and expand?
The grain will be oriented left-to-right, so the movement should primarily be front-to-back.
I suppose I could just put dowels up through the rails, as with the top.
Another thought I had was maybe cutting dadoes in the bottom face of the shelf so it can nest onto the rails a bit, then doing one or two dowels at or near the center of the rails, so it would be free to move away from the center line. Then I’d just leave a 1/16″ gap between the front/back edges and legs so it won’t press against them and stress everything if it does expand a bit.
Another, perhaps wilder thought was maybe putting dowels into the legs horizontally, then have corresponding holes in the shelf to fit over them and not glue them in place. That way the shelf’s weight would still rest on the rails, but it’s position left/right and up/down would be fixed by the dowels, and it could expand/contract as needed.
I’m not sure if that description comes across well. Am I overthinking it? Should I worry much about wood movement on something about 13″ across that will live indoors? Would any of those ideas work? I feel like they probably would, but I haven’t been able to find good descriptions anywhere of someone doing something similar that didn’t involve pocket hole joinery or hidden bolts. I don’t want to use any metal fasteners. I’ve been mulling it over for a week or so and I feel kind of stuck. Please chime in if you have any thoughts or ideas to try out!