My wife kept reminding me that I'd promised to build her a blanket chest
- she claims 20 years ago :-). So I've started on one. I didn't want to spend a lot of design/rejected/design time so I picked a plan out of a Wood magazine and she approved it.
It's a frame and panel with the legs serving as frame edges. It uses stub tenons (3/8" thick, 3/8" deep, 2.5" and 4" wide). After I got everything all cut it occurred to me that they were using the plywood panels as structural members. Well, I'm not using plywood so my oak panels are free floating.
So now I'm worrying if the stub tenons are strong enough. I've thought of a few possible fixes. I could glue the edge of the panels that go into the legs along the edge and across the 1st inch of the top and bottom. That would add some strength.
I could add a couple of dowels to the rail/leg joints but they'd have to be offset because the grooves in the legs almost meet now. For that reason there's no room for floating tenons.
There's also a 2" wide ledge glued to the top edges of the rails and legs so that does add a little strength.
Or I could admit defeat and go buy some oak plywood and save all my nicely resawn quartersawn 3/8" panels for some future projects.
Am I being overly cautious? I don't expect the chest to take a lot of racking or rough handling. Maybe it'd be fine just the way it is.