Woodturners of North Texas preview bracelet box demo by Janice Levi

Woodturners of North Texas used its June 25 meeting to put a small project at the center of a big skills lesson: Janice Levi’s bracelet box demo. The club set the gathering for 6:30 p.m. at the Handley-Meadowbrook Lions Club in Fort Worth, with members able to attend in person or join virtually.

The hybrid format matched the club’s wider reach. Woodturners of North Texas describes itself as an active club with more than 150 members and says it has been operating for 35 years. Monthly meetings are open to everyone, regardless of skill level, and the club says it uses demonstrations, educational programs, mentoring, design challenges and a library of books and videos to help turners build both technical and creative skills.

The bracelet box itself was the kind of project that rewards intermediate turners who want to move beyond basic bowls and spindles. Levi’s handout laid out a full turning plan built around an end-grain blank, a cross-grain blank, a wasteblock, bracelet spacers, double-sided tape and a standard kit that included bowl gouges, spindle gouges, parting tools, roughing gouges, scrapers, hollowing tools, a center finder, calipers, sandpaper, a flexible tape measure, painter’s tape, a Forstner bit and a Jacob’s chuck. The project began with sizing the bracelet by measuring the wearer’s hand and dividing the circumference by pi, then using that number to guide the turning.

From there, the sequence moved through the sort of details that test proportion and precision. The blank was roughed round, mounted to a wasteblock, and turned into its outer shape. A low-profile parting tool was used in the enclosed area, then the chuck was expanded to shape the box section. Levi’s notes called for hollowing the interior to about 3/16-inch wall thickness before fitting and refining the lid until it could be removed with one hand but still felt snug.

Levi’s own background explains why the project lands so squarely in the sweet spot between technique and design. She says her fascination with woodturning began in childhood, and that she got her own lathe in 2001. From bowls and platters, she moved into lidded boxes, ornaments, hollow forms and eventually wearable art, including purses and jewelry. Gulf Coast Woodturners described the bracelet box as a project that joins boxmaking with jewelry, including earrings stored in the box.

Her name has long been familiar to Woodturners of North Texas. The club’s archives list earlier Levi presentations on Jewelry Made Easy in 2014, Pyrography 101 in 2015, Ornaments and Finials in 2019 and Gnomes in 2021. For members looking for a compact project with real demands on proportion, hollowing and lid fit, the bracelet box fit the bill, and the club’s handout turned the meeting into a reusable shop reference.