Glue-only joinery on big table bases - confident or nervous?

I stopped bolting through joints about ten years back and haven't regretted it. Built a similar base for our kitchen table, white oak half-laps, just Titebond and clamps, and that thing has survived three kids doing handstands off the end of it. The glue line in a tight joint is honestly stronger than the surrounding wood, so if something lets go it'll be the oak tearing out, not the glue failing.

The one thing I'd check before walking away is that the laps actually bottomed out clean when you clamped. If there's any gap in there, no amount of glue fixes it, and that's where a bolt woud secretly be doing the real work. I ruined one joint on a bench years ago by clamping over a shaving and wondering later why it got loose.

For a table that gets dragged around a lot, my worry is less the joints and more racking, so I'd put your energy into a good stretcher or apron between the bases. That's what keeps the whole thing square when somebody scoots it across the floor with the legs loaded. A bolt at each crossing does almost nothing for that anyway.

I'm on the bolt side of this one, and it comes from a repair job I did a few years back. A neighbor asked me to fix a trestle-style table somebody else built, glue-only half-laps, and the crossings had racked enought that one leg splayed out maybe a quarter inch. The glue hadn't failed on the face of the joint, but the shoulders had opened up because oak moves with the seasons and a long table base sees real side load when people push it around the floor. Since then I put a bolt in every trestle intersection I build. Glue everything like you're not using fasteners, then drill through the middle of the crossing, run a bolt with a washer and a nut on the far side, and glue a plug over it cut from the same board so the grain runs through. After sanding you honestly can't find it, and mine has stayed tight through four years of being dragged out for holidays.

The rack resistance is the thing glue alone doesn't buy you. Glue holds the joint faces, but a long base that gets shoved sideways is levering at those crossings constantly. A bolt in compression there costs you an afternoon and some plugs and you never think about it again. I'd rather have it and not need it.

I've landed on glue only for crossings, but I did discover on my last base that the thru-bolt question gets complicated by wood movement, because a bolt crossing two pieces of oak with grain running perpendicular to each other will work loose over a couple of seasons as the widths change at diferent rates. What I did instead on one build was peg the laps the old way, offset holes so the peg pulls the shoulders shut, which feels ancient but has held up fine on a workbench that gets shoved around daily. Has anyone here tried drawboring a trestle, or does the peg split eventually in stock this thin?

This is kind of reassuring to read because I built a little glued-only bench last summer and keep waiting for it to fall apart, and it just hasn't. One thing I still don't understand though, how do you acutally check that the two pieces are sitting flat togather inside the joint once the glue is on and everythign is clamped? On mine I just eyeballed the outside and hoped for the best. Is there some trick to feeling or seeing a gap before it dries?

Update: after reading the point about bolts working loose where the grain crosses, I skipped them and went glue only. Did a dry run first, clamped hard, and slid a raking light along the joint line to spot any proud spots before glue-up. Still wondering though, once the glue is on and clamps are tight, is there any real way to check the inside faces are seating flat, or do you just trust the dry fit?