One of the little things I enjoyed when making some pieces of furniture was to not employ any metal fasteners. While I used better joinery to make the kitchen furniture I recently posted, a quick and simple method involving dowels might was used in fastening the top of some oak furniture I made. I'll post some photos later on.
Essentially the oak end tables, for instance, consisted of 4 final pieces: the top, two legs and a stretcher running between the legs just above carpet height. The table tops were 1-1/2" thick, as were the legs, so there was plenty of "meat," to work with.
To assemble the tables, I prepared the 4 pieces, each of which consisted of several glue-ups. The table was then assembled and glued with no joinery to supplement the glue. Once the glue had cured and the clamps removed, I then drilled (2) 1" holes through the top on each end, down into the legs and inserted 1" dowels I'd turned from walnut. The dowels were scored to permit trapped glue to escape and on the inside of the legs, I'd drilled a hole for this purpose as well. I repeated this on the spreader, using 3/4" dowel.
The resulting table was strong as could be and you could figuratively park a truck on it. The exposed ends of the dowels were cut relatively flush, then sanded smooth before finishing the table, resulting in what I considered a decorative little touch that was also structural in nature.