Thoughts on glue vs biscuits for beginner joints?

For a small box in pine, I'd skip the biscuits and just glue it. I built a bunch of keepsake boxes for family a few years back and every one of them was plain glue and clamps. Pine is soft but wood glue on a long grain to long grain joint is stronger than the wood itself, so the joint will not be your weak point. Biscuits mostly buy you alignment, and on a small box there are easier ways to get that.

What helped me most was a dry fit before any glue touched the wood, then clamping with the corners checked using a framing square. I also cut a couple of scrap blocks with a 90 degree notch to sit inside the corners while the clamps tightened, which keeps things square without you babysitting every clamp. A light squeeze of Titebond and clamps snugged, not cranked, since pine crushes easy. If you want the outside to look clean, glue squeeze out is the real enemy. Wipe most of it off with a damp rag right away, then scrape the rest once it's tacky. Sanding dried glue out of soft pine leaves blotches that show up forever under finish.

The whole glue up took me maybe twenty minutes once I had my clamps and cauls laid out beforehand. Save the biscuit joiner money for when you build somthing bigger where alignment across wide panels actually matters.

I'll offer a slightly diferent take here. When I built my first boxes out of construction lumber offcuts, the glue joint was never the issue. Keeping the corners from creeping out of square during clamping was. I had one box come out with a corner gap you could slide a business card into because the panel shifted while I fumbled with clamps. So for a first build I'd actually lean the other way on the alignment question, not for strength but for forgiveness. If you allready own a biscuit joiner, using it takes ten extra minutes and buys you a lot of slack. If you don't own one, don't buy one for this. Instead try the tape hinge trick: lay a strip of painter's tape across each outside corner after dry fitting, spread the glue, fold the box up like a present, and tape the last seam shut. Then check for square across the diagonals and adjust before the glue grabs. I learned that method from a Stumpy Nubs video years ago and it turned my glue-ups from stressful to almost boring. Pine also dents easily, so put wax paper or a scrap under your clamps and don't crank them hard. Honestly the corners will look cleaner than anything a biscuit could give you on softwood, since biscuits in pine tend to telegraph a little bump near the joint anyway.

I don't think it's as simple as just relying on clamps for perfect alignment, especally for a beginner. The claim that just good clamping will handle the corners is too optimistic. Even with a dry fit, when you introduce glue and pressure, soft pine naturally wants to creep or warp slightly under stress. I've found that even small joints need some internal rigidity to hold thier squareness while curing, or you risk that gap issue. Using those biscuit slots just locks the whole joint structure down so the wood isn't fighting the clamps. I'd still skip biscuits for a beginner, but I'd insist on using some kind of internal registration pin for the corners instead of just relying on squareness checks!

One thing that made my first pine box way less stressful was switching from butt joints to simple miters with a band clamp. I picked up a cheap nylon strap clamp for like fifteen bucks and it wraps the whole box at once, so all four corners pull tight togather instead of you chasing them around with bar clamps. My first miters were off by a hair but a couple passes on 120 grit wrapped around a flat block closed the gaps fine. Also, pine telegraphs every mistake, so take an extra minute planing the end grain flat before glue or you will see a shadow line under finish no matter how good the joint holds.