Well, I guess I have to jump in, too.  Have an Ohio Tool Ogee that had
some severe checks from its time out here in
the Great Tool Desert (Actual bought it over in Fort Garland, CO, which is even
more of a desert than here.)   Brought
it home together with the better part of a set of H&Rs (Pierre Fogel and a few
others will remember that gloat ;-)) and
plunked it down in a can of raw linseed oil.  Week with one end in the oil,
then a week with the other end.  That was
over a year ago.  Those checks have all but disappeared.  The disappearing
didn't happen right away although they had
closed noticeably.  I suspect that the oil took some time to equalize across
cell walls and to relieve the residual
stress from the cracks.  That plane is noticeably heavier than any of the other
comparable size beech planes and
slightly darker.
     The important thing to me is that the oil brought back to good user status
a plane that was well on its way to
unusable.  While I wouldn't recommend this treatment for all woodies, it sure
worked on this one.
                              George