I'm in the process of making a table with the legs attached to a large batten that fits into a sliding dovetail slot. This is inspired by a table from Chris Schwarz's Anarchist's Design book (there's a picture here). One thing I'm doing differently is that the batten in my table is tapered; they're about 3 inches wide and taper 1/16 inch, and are 22 inches in length.

My first question is this: how tight should the fit be? Right now it's somewhat humid where I live, and it's not in an air-conditioned space. My goal is to have the battens friction-fit, without the use of glue, so that the table can be knocked down in the future. I'm concerned that if make it have a good fit now, it'll be loose in the winter.

Here's a picture: the batten currently is about 2 inches shy of the end of the slot, after hitting it with a reasonable amount of force from a mallet.

IMG_8107.jpg

Adjusting the fit is pretty simple: I just take it out, plane the edge, and re-fit it. If it's not equally tight at the front and back, then I shave off a little from the tighter side. If I fit it too tightly now, do I have to worry about splitting out the edge of the table? On one hand, there's only about 1.5" of material between the batten and the edge, but on the other hand, the lateral (splitting) forces are distributed over a large area.


My next question is about tapered sliding dovetails in general. It's simple to adjust the fit of these battens, but for a normal sliding dovetail, you can't use an ordinary bench plane to shave down the tail part. What are some good techniques and tools for adjusting the tail and/or slot?