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I'm building a coffee table out of a live edge walnut slab. It's about 5'x30"x1.125"

For the legs I've made some blue-stain ponderosa blocks, 18"x15"x2.25"

Any suggestions on how to join the legs to the table. I was about to cut tenons on the legs. But given the thickness of the top, I'm not sure the length I can achieve - maybe 1/2" - will be worthwhile. But it would increase the glued surface area significantly.

There will be an arched piece of steel tying things together on each side as well.

Ideas?slab and leg

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    Stub tenons could be fine, but with that wild grain you don't know what kind of movement you're going to get so I would have concerns about stresses building up. You can join a top to legs/leg assemblies without any actual joinery — pegs, tabletop fasteners, figure-8 fasteners, traditional buttons, they all work and every one has the advantage that you can detach the top if need be rather than making the table one monolithic structure that forever has to be moved as one. Even without the steel truss this is going to be significantly heavy, right? – Graphus Apr 23 at 5:28
  • Unrelated to what you've asked about I just noticed the orientation of the clamps in your image, have you attached what are now commonly called breadboard ends to each end of the slab? – Graphus Apr 23 at 5:31
  • Yes, I put ends on it. One end has a significant crack on the bottom that I'm hoping to control. And I didn't think the slab was thick enough for a big end grain edge to look good. This was a thicker slab that I had re-sawn to make book-matched pieces. – CoAstroGeek Apr 23 at 13:18
  • I'll take a look at some of the things you mentioned. It's going to be heavy, but I don't think absurdly heavy that I'd want to be able to disassemble it. – CoAstroGeek Apr 23 at 13:19

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