My mom asked me to make her a wooden tray, and I've got myself tangled up on wood movement.
The base is quartersawn sapele, about 10" / 25 cm wide. The problem are the handle pieces (visible in the photo): they sit on top of the side rails, running perpendicular to the direction the base wants to move. So whatever I use to fix them will restrain movement.
If the handles were let finger-jointed between the rails, I think I'd know what to do — drill through for dowels, glue one end and leave the other floating with a dowel so the base can move. But because the handles are surface-mounted on top of the rails I'm not sure what to do.
The only solution I've come up with is an elongated slot and a screw, which works but leaves a visible screw head, and I'm not thrilled about that.
So, two questions:
- At 10" wide in quartersawn sapele, is this actually something I need to engineer around, or am I overthinking it?
- how would you attach handles on top of the rails while allowing for movement, without visible hardware?
I'd prefer to account for movement even if it might not be needed, without visible hardware