Background:

Doing some volunteer work for one of our senior lady clients. Changed
out a faucet seat and washer, leak stops, all done. Then I get the
famous "One more little thing you could look at ...". Here we go
again!

She has this pretty, kinda old writing desk, French escritoire style,
where you let the front down to a horizontal to open the desk
interior, the inside of the front panel becoming the writing surface.
The outside of this panel is carven, some oriental scene.

Situation
The panel in question is in a rail and stile frame. It's about 32 X 15
in a frame that's about 36 X 22. The frame is held together by through
tenons. The panel rides about 1/4" deep in the grooves in the rails
and stiles. It is not removable without getting the frame apart, and
there's no good way I can see to do that. The panel wood is fairly
heavy, fine grained, may be mahogany or another tropical hardwood.

The panel is badly cupped, warped side to side along its length. The
cupping has broken out part of the edge of the framing at the tops of
the sides. One side is broken free for about 5" and the other side is
split for about the same length. I have removed the inner panel that
forms the writing surface. It was glued to the carved panel but had
largely broken free from the cupping, so I just eased it off by hand.

Question
I'm looking for bright ideas on getting the panel "unwarped". I can't
just glue the broken/split edges back where they came from as the
cupping is so extreme it'll just break them out again, I think.

I re-read my decades old copy of The Furniture Doctor and have the
framed panel out on the concrete patio up on wooden blocks at the
panel corners, concave side down, with a wet towel under it (not
touching the wood) and a 25 lb barbell weight on cauls on the top. I'm
hoping that 95+ Dallas heat will create a bit of a steamer to bend the
wood back.

Posting some pics to a.b.p.w

Any thoughts?

Tom