I made a table where the legs are attached to a batten, and each batten is attached to the top using a sliding dovetail.

sliding-dovetail-leg.jpg

The battens are 22" long and tapered, so that one end is 3" wide and the other end is 1/16" smaller. When I assembled it, it was during a humid part of the summer and the fit was very tight. I had to hit it with a mallet to get to move the last inch or so. The table was rock solid, even though I didn't use glue on the battens.

Now it's winter and the air is dry, and the battens are loose -- I can slide them out by hand with no resistance, and the table rocks back and forth when it's bumped.

I asked in these forums a while back about seasonal movement and was advised to not worry about it, but it looks like I should have worried about it a bit more.

Any advice about how to deal with the loose battens?

And in the future, if I build something like this again, how should I deal with seasonal movement? I obviously don't want it to be loose in the winter, but I also don't want it to be so tight in the summer that it would crack. I wonder if it would have helped if, in the battens, if I had oriented the wood so that the expansion across the dovetail was radial with respect to the growth rings.