Quantifying hydration and the belly bulge

I had two Gibsons come into the shop last month exhibiting bulbous bellies and diving bridges.

The process I learned in school was to hydrate the box with damp paper towels and tape off any air holes. I put a hygrometer in the box and checked on the guitar every two days until it stopped absorbing the water from the paper towels. At this point the hygrometer was showing 77% relative humidity. I then used a jack in front of the bridge inside the box, and clamped a straight bar just behind the bridge and clamped it down until my relief gauge read 0.100 and left the guitar in clamps for two weeks in my 50% RH repair shop. Everything seems fine; I strung them up after a few days and the look and play as expected. But I also feel that there may be better ways to address this.

My questions are:
A: How are we sure we have correctly humidified the box?
2: What are best practices for measuring or determining just how far to clamp down the bulge?
C: How long do we need to keep the guitar under clamping contortionism?

Thanks for all you do!