I can concur to the scent portion, it does smell awesome, not as much as a fresh Camphor but not as stink as Chinese Elm, this is the worst wood I will never touch again, though it is readily available in my place.
As for cracks, so far I was quite lucky with the five bowls, I have very few to non at all. I'm using drying technique I saw on some of the local shows, if you interested, send me an email, I will explain the process.
The title of this post was to encourage people to post other subjects (at least - that is what I understood) and so I did, if this is inappropriate feel free to remove it
