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The end aprons were not glued (except at the dovetail joints). Instead they were bolted to the bench top using bench bolts like these:

I suppose you could just use lag screws, but you would be driving the screw into end-grain, which lacks strength. These were placed in elongated holes to allow for wood movement. The design is intended to allow the top slab to expand & contract all it wants to in that dado that I made in the end aprons. The tenon will keep the top flat.
First I decided where to place the bolts on the aprons, and I drilled a countersink with a 1″ forstner bit and a through hole with a 5/16″ bit.

I then placed the apron back in position on the bench and used this as a guide to drill a 5/16″ hole into the end grain of the bench top. I took my time to make sure I drilled as straight as possible.

Once I had these holes drilled, I took the aprons back off and flipped the bench top over. I then used a simple jig to guide placement of the cross-bore. It’s just a scrap piece of wood cut into an “L” shape that holds a 5/16″ bolt and a pencil. The bolt aligns the jig with the hole I drilled, so even if I was not perfectly perpendicular, the pencil would still mark directly over the hole.

When I made that jig, I made sure the bolt and pencil were directly in line with each other by referencing off the drill press fence. The position of the pencil was determined by figuring out exactly where the threads on the end of the bolt would be inside the bench top. To figure that out I pulled my test block out of the trash can and drilled a test hole/countersink just like in the aprons:

I then drilled out the cross-bore by sighting along a square to keep the bit perpendicular (this is the bottom of the benchtop):

The result was right on the money… I used magnets to lower the cross dowel into the hole for testing.

I then took the aprons back off and elongated the holes on the drill press.

The countersink was plugged with a piece of cherry after final assembly.

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