Anyone Remember This Drying Fad?

But George, by my expert analysis, it appears you placed the brace in the wrong direction to the grain. According to Soren's instruction, the brace should be perpendicular to the grain direction - i.e., against the side grain, not the end grain.

In the thread you referenced Soren Berger wrote: "To keep bowls as round as possible insert a length of wood 1/2"x1"in the top of the bowls this stick should be placed accross the run of the grain just cut these sticks on the bandsaw with a slight taper on the ends with an easy fit into the bowl..."

Hmmmm?

From the grain at the rim of the bowl it appears correctly placed.

You'll want to look again. It is indeed across the grain. You can see the heart at the 1:00 position and a CA'd radial check at 2:00. As you no doubt know, placing it along the grain would be worthless, since contraction is almost nil in that direction.

IIRC, some advocated using plywood disks as well. Tried them, too.

I think I did three-four woods with three or four types of crosspieces. Almost 25% blew open, including, the first and only instance I've had with aspen.

Well, it's your bowl, so you'd know... but it appears to me to be side grain from 11:30 to 3:00 and similar opposite. I guess they're growth rings around the heart then.

The one under examination, which went toward warming the house last night, had lost 1/4" of the ~10 it began with. Normal for hard maple that diameter would have been 1/2", so there certainly wasn't a lot gained. I think what kept this one from blowing apart was the obvious compression of the center post.

I'm sure the concept was that the wood was in a plastic state when it was merely wet. I have placed hot microwaved pieces over molds with reasonable success, but there the lignin's weakened because of the heat. I know I quickly discovered that trying to weight a stack of planks to control warp was a fool's errand. Lot of power there.

Actually, if you look at the base of the pillar, you will see classic signs of an uphill scrape beginning at around 1:30, recommencing at 7:00 or so. Dead giveaway. Must have been using a dull gouge by the time I bottomed that beauty.