....He was just a country carpenter, but he had vision....
Only a guess, but you may be thinking 'dentil', the repeating block strip that might be worked into the crown molding somewhere. In a completely silly side story, a while back I made a short span of decorative natural finish wood fencing. Nothing store bought, the whole thing was milled up from rough stock with some dentil molding that I made up. A couple of years later, on a whim, my wife had it painted. I could've slapped that thing together for a fraction of the time and money if I only knew.
Anyway, if it's the dentil molding that I'm thinking about, there's a bunch of marginally supported end grain. You started with some good stock, seeing how you folks were commenting about splitting, for your finish carpenter to tackle the project. The fellow might have had some vision, but he sounds like a good ole boy that took pride in himself and his work. Sure, I'd like to see how it turned out if a picture works out. Take care.
