Tom wrote:
Sonny:

I concur with your guess that the wood was likely air dried. The piece
is 50+ years old, came from Asia, so kiln drying seems unlikely.

The back side (convex side) is unfinished, just some dried glue which
I plan to scrape off anyway). I just learned from the owner that the
whole piece got wet some years ago during a move - probable source of
the warping. If that's the case then the back side (unfinished except
for bad glue) would absorb more moisture than the finished front side,
causing the cupping, or at least that's my theory.

Dampening the convex side is counter intuitive, but WTH, I'll give it
a shot. I am concerned about cracking of the panel if I do relief
cuts. Its varying thickness, due to the relief carving, would make
depth of cut pretty critical and hard to determine.

One maybe good, maybe bad thing is that the grain is not straight
along the panel width, but at a slight angle, maybe 15 degrees. The
cupping is almost dead straight along the width. IMHO this could
reduce the potential of a split running the width of the panel as it
tries to un-cup. Wishful thinking in progress.


Oh geeze... think about this stuff for a moment! Do you really think that
mother nature devoted this much anal retentive babble in her original
effects upon that wood? This group can generate way too much hyperbole when
it comes to trying to sound scientific in their approach to things. Makes
the authors feel good about themselves, or something... Anyway - think
about how it warped. Not a rigidly controlled environment. Now think about
how you might reverse that. Do you see any common themes?

Oh - and before any of the experts chime in - yes, I have reversed many
issues like this, without resorting to all of the thought processes that
tend to prevail here.

--

-Mike-