My son and I have been looking at bed designs in preparation for building him a bed. He likes the design of the day bed in the background of this image. It's a design by a French furniture designed from the mid to late 1940's. I modeled it up and quickly modified it for a standard mattress.
I'm looking for opinions on how to attach the side rails to the legs. The side rails are 1-1/4 in. thick by 2-7/8 in. high with a 1-1/4 in. thick cleat glued on the bottom edge. I don't want to use conventional bed bolts and I don't think standard hooks will work. I was thinking of steel dowels and a bolt into a cross dowel set into the posts. Another thought is to use those joiners designed for counter tops.
I could revised the design to make the rail taller and just add the cleat on the inside which is more common but I'm trying to adhere to the original design as much as I can.