All boxmaking begins with the same basic steps:
- Knowing the size of the object to be boxed;
- Identifying the grain direction on the board;
- Rough cutting the board to a slightly larger size then needed;
- Squaring the board;
- Cutting the pieces for the initial tray;
- Gluing the tray;
- Sanding the tray where necessary;
- Cutting the covering material; and
- Covering the tray.
Depending upon the box being made, there may be more than one tray. For example, the clamshell has two. Regardless of this, one of the things that I came to love about making boxes is that all future measurements are based upon the previous steps. Did that make sense?
So, if you begin by measuring the object. The size of the tray is decided by the object. The size of the base/lid of a box is dependent upon the size of the tray, and so on. At each phase, you simply use the previous object to measure with. And, I do mean that literally. The only time I used a ruler for any of these projects was as a straight edge. I loved not making precise measurements, it made it simple.
Gluing the tray was done using straight PVA, waxpaper, a board, and a C-Clamp. You start by running a bead of glue along the head, positioning it against the board, and attaching the base. It’s important to make sure that the head wall doesn’t rise up during the gluing. So you press it down as you glue it. The board helps to keep everything in place and squared up. 
You then turn the base to glue the next piece, which would be the fore-edge. You keep moving the base as you glue, until all pieces are in place. It’s important to remember to remove the excess glue that spills into the box as the pieces are adjoined. Once the sides are all glued, the tray sits until dry (about 5 minutes). You know it’s dry when the wax paper peels away with no trouble. Then it’s time to sand paper any rough edges and the corners to blend them better.
Once that is done, it’s time to measure and cut the paper/cloth to cover the box. I usually followed the same cutting steps as I did for the boards. To cover a box, we used a string to get the overall length of paper needed, and created a jig to measure the outside and inside of the walls plus about 1 1/2 for margins. You can see the string and jig in my box tray.
Adhering the tray cover differs with the type of material you use. With paper, you usually glue out the paper with paste. With cloth, you glue out the box using a mixture of PVA and Methyl Cellulose. Though how you apply the glue differs, the process is still the same.
Glue what you need to and then place the tray head- or tail-side down on the covering material. Be sure that there is at least a 3/4 turn in to be glued onto the base and about an inch to be turned on to the next wall; this can be eyeballed very easily as long as the base is facing you. After this initial placement, it’s a matter of rolling the box and gluing where necessary. It’s important to make sure that corners are tight. So I learned to put a little pressure on the box as I rotated it. Be sure to cut off any excess before gluing the last wall.
Once the walls were covered, I used my bone folder to crease the bottom turn in on all sides. It can be hard to work with paper and do everything because it has to be entirely glued out before being applied. With cloth, you only glue the board that is currently being worked on.
I then cut the corners on the bottom so that there would be a neat seam. This was done by literally pinching the material together at the corner and then cutting from the bottom out. You should never cut from the corner in because you could actually cut the corner.
After this, it’s time to turn the paper inside the box. This requires making several special cuts that will allow the covering to turn in neatly and cover the corners fully. The cuts are made on the spine and fore-edge walls or on whatever are the longer walls, but it has to be opposite walls.
The first cut is made from the outside of the board to the end of the covering material. The next cut is made from the inside edge of that same board, but it begins a little further away. This creates a small sliver of material this is then cut away on an angle. This is done on all four corners on the long sides only! The result should look similar to the photo on the left.
Once these cuts are made, it’s time to glue everything down inside the box. 
The short walls are glued in first, and then the long ones. When it’s done, the corners are covered nicely, and there is about a 3/4 inch margin covering the bottom.
And that’s basically it for cutting and covering the tray. Whew!
