Semi-adequate closed braids and volume

In this paper, we show that the volumes for a family of A-adequate closed braids can be bounded above and below in terms of the twist number, the number of braid strings, and a quantity that can be read from the combinatorics of a given closed braid diagram. We also show that the volumes for many of these closed braids can be bounded in terms of a single stable coefficient of the colored Jones polynomial, thus showing that this collection of closed braids satisfies a Coarse Volume Conjecture. By expanding to a wider family of closed braids, we also obtain volume bounds in terms of the number of positive and negative twist regions in a given closed braid diagram. Furthermore, for a family of A-adequate closed 3-braids, we show that the volumes can be bounded in terms of the parameter s from the Schreier normal form of the 3-braid. Finally we show that, for the same family of A-adequate closed 3-braids, the parameters k and s from the Schreier normal form can actually be read off of the original 3-braid word.