The upper case requires a large panel to be glued up for the case bottom. Once all of the pieces of the panel are milled to final size, the joints must be cleaned up. There are several ways to do this, but my favorite is to fold two adjoining pieces together like a book and to run them both across the jointer together with the joint side down. With them facing opposite direction from folding them together, any offset from 90 degrees will be canceled out leaving you with a perfectly matched joint. 

I use biscuits for alignment on most larger panel glue ups. This helps keep the glued up panel nice and flat across the seams. 

While I normally use my panel clamps for panel glue ups, parallel clamps work well too. In this case, I saved the panel clamps for a side panel that also needed to be glued up. 

The larger panel is large enough that I am able to get the bottom panel and one side panel out of it, but not the second side. The second side will require it's own panel glue up. 

After the glue is cured, I first cut the side panel from the larger bottom panel, and then cut the bottom panel to length. 

The side panel is cut to its final size. 

The bottom panel is cut to its final width at the table saw.

All three panels are run through the drum sander to clean up any glue joints and to ensure flatness. 

Before cutting the dovetails, I use one of the side panels to set the depth of my marking gauge. 

The bottom panel will be the tails board, so it is marked on all four sides of both ends. 

I use a set of dividers to "walk out" the width of the tails. 

Here I mark the ends of the tails with a small square and a knife. I always do all of my marking with a knife. This is the most accurate way to make a mark, and makes cleaning up with a chisel a lot easier. 

The sides are marked with a 1:8 ratio dovetail guide. 

I always mark the waste with as clear of a mark as I can. Here I use a white pencil which stands out nicely against the dark walnut. 

I free cut my dovetails with a Japanese style pull saw, but there are a lot of good ways to accomplish the same task. Western style dovetails saws are great tools, and there is also nothing wrong with using a magnetic guide. The key is to find what tool or method you are comfortable with and then get lots of practice. 

The bulk of the waste is cut out with a coping saw making to stay above the marking gauge line by a little bit. 

The waste from the ends is cut with the dovetail saw. 

I use chisels to bring the dovetails back to my knife line. To do this, a backer board is clamped behind the work piece and the waste is pared back very slowly. This isn't a time to be aggressive with the cut. Slow and steady here. 

With the grain being oriented to wrap around the case coupled with the dimensions on the sides, the side pieces ended up with the grain running in the short direction. This isn't the strongest orientation (which will be a factor later) and it can lead to some flexing of the work piece. To prevent this, I clamped a piece of extruded aluminum I had in the shop to the board to keep it flat. This could have been done with a piece of scrap as well.

With such a large joint, care has to be given to making sure the tail board is perfectly aligned with the pin board. I use a light under the work to spot any gaps in the placement. 

Just like with the tail board, all of my marking is done with a knife. Here I am tracing the tails onto the pin board. 

The marks are then transferred down to the marking gauge line with a knife and a small square. 

The cuts are made slightly inside the marks

The bulk of the waste is removed with a coping saw. 

The remaining waste is removed with a chisel. I take small cuts working my way back to the line in as small of increments as I can manage. 

The waste is pared away from the pins in the same way as the tails. 

With the joinery cut in the bottom and two sides, I move on to the top two stretchers. 

The tails are cut first, just like on the larger pieces

The tails are then transferred to the sides. Doing a dry assembly of the case helps keep everything in its proper place. 

The joinery is cut using the same steps as before. 

And finally, everything is fit into place.