Quartersawn cross to long grain glue

[Roger Marty]

In the project plans pictured, I made the top out of quartersawn oak.

I'm wondering if I can skip the half-round molding on the top and instead just directly route the top piece with half-round? I'd still like the cove molding to serve as a lip for the cover of this chest. And I understand why dovetail key is needed with flatsawn (because wood movement would otherwise not allow the cove molding to be glued to the top). But my thinking is that with a quartersawn stop, I can skip the finicky dovetail key, directly route the half-round edges of the top, and then glue the cove molding to the bottom of the top?

Or is this partly aesthetics too to avoid edge-grain molding?


366900

[John TenEyck]

Even QS has plenty of expansion/contraction to crack off the cove molding if you glue it directly to your panel. IMO you still need to follow the plans as shown in order to avoid problems.

John

[glenn bradley]

You don't have to use the dovetail key but, you will have to do something to allow the top to expand and contract. The dovetail slide just happens to be a better way of accomplishing this. For the trim of that scale I do not see another method that would be really very acceptable over time. You could glue the front 2 to 3 inches and tack the rear accepting that this will eventually fail and require repair or replacement. You could glue the front couple inches and use small screws in slotted holes at the middle and the rear of the trim but, again the scale of the trim just doesn't really support this.

If you don't want to do it as shown I would simply rethink the design altogether. Make the top a bit shorter and breadboard the ends. This would give you something long grain to glue the trim to. Or skip the trim on the top and add it as a molding to the sides along the top edge.

[Lee Schierer]

Don't glue the dovetail strip to the edge either. I would recommend making it in several short pieces with gaps in between the sections.