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Making strong "Z legs" for a table
(lemmy.world)
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I’m not sure about the dowels
The bridle joint will want to pivot and the desk acts as a big lever exerting a lot of force onto that joint with a large force multiplier.
It might be worth upgrading the dowels to steel bolts, but I don’t know a lot about the strength of wood under these forces.
If the dowel is 1” In and the Z is 48” long (no idea if that’s close), it exerts 48x the desk weight on to the dowels. You look at oak, a desk top of 50lb, a 1” dowel would be at over twice its breaking point. Two dowels and glue in the joint would will help, but steel bolts will have a much higher rating against shear here.
All of this is napkin math, and I’m not an expert at all here.
Your napkin math is good though. Excellent points thank you!