When you have joined them properly for glueing, let your glue be nicely hot and not too thick, and hold both edges of the boards together so that you can with a brush put the glue on both at one time, put the two together very quickly, let one of them be in the bench-screw, and while there rub the other backwards and forwards till the glue sets, which it will soon do if well joined. Let the whole dry, and then the glued part will be as strong as any other part of the board.
After your sides, ends, bottom, and top are thus prepared, you must then plane them up nicely, so that they are perfectly smooth and straight. Use first the jack plane, then the trying plane. When this is done you have to proceed to a nice little job, namely, to dovetail the corners together, so as to form your box. In this process much depends upon the planing and squaring of the stuff, for if you have not done this nicely the dovetailing will be very imperfectly performed. Assuming that everything has been well done, then take the two ends of the box, and see that each is perfectly square and true to the other. Then allow one-eighth of an inch more than the thickness of your sides, and set out the ends, squaring it over on both sides, which when the dovetails are cut out will form the inside of the box.
TO CUT THE DOVETAILS.
Take one “end-piece” of the box and place it endways into the bench-screw, and mark out the dovetails on the edge of the board inside, thus:
then with your dovetail saw cut in into the marks down to the lines squared over on the flat side like this—
Then with a chisel cut out that part of the wood that is crossed, and leave the other part, this being the part which will form the pins or tails. Then take one side of your box and lay it flat on the bench, the inside uppermost; then place the end you have cut on it, keeping the edges flush, and mark round the shape of the pins, which will leave them after this form—