Comment by glaslong
4 days ago
A related thing that took me a while to accept when I started woodworking is that wood moves, a lot.
If you built the bookshelf in wood, it will be expanding, contracting and shifting over time with temperature and humidity variation throughout the day and season. And asymmetrically depending on the grain.
The straight right angles won't stay that way, and it's better to design such that they change in complementary ways, rather than remain perfect.
Depending on what they’re doing, good finish carpenters will definitely take a bunch of moisture readings on a slab of wood before working on it.
Figure 8 fasteners for the win, baby. Let that table top grow an inch. I don't care.