I was thinking hard about this before the Glowforge even arrived. When I first discussed it Jules made note of someone who did use that technique but was not very positive of how well it worked. The conversation was last nov? or so but could not find it,
When the Glowforge arrived my very first cut was a trial of that concept and I still have that piece hanging about. my hope was to shape the sawtooth and pull the wood into a compound “saddle curve”. That saddle concept was a fail but it bent to about 190 degrees and remains so to this day.
My next wild experiment was to make the wood bend 360 degrees and this was the post about that…
After a lot more experimentation I found the engrave to be superfluous, as long as the wood was very wet and you were very careful not to “surprise” the wood but to bend it slowly. I also found that alcohol both got the wood wet faster and dry faster, even replacing water when I bleached the wood.
That design for a core base is very interesting and I use it a lot but as I am always looking for round, I have a collection of cans and jars of the range of diameters I need. Of some interest to your project, I have found that both inner and outer support are a good thing and will hold the object tight while it dries. Once fully dry it will keep the shape well. However, a point I missed for a long time is that the wet wood grows and it shrinks a lot as it dries (it is that differential drying that seems to be a major cause of warping) I found that an 8-inch piece of wood can be 8.5 inches when wet and dry back to 8-inches. that will mean that you need to allow for that difference when setting up and drying that the shrinkage can break the wood if there is no give. also I was driving myself crazy measuring to size only to find that the piece was smaller when I tried to assemble it.
edit:I ran across that first ever piece:
