Quote - Very nice work.

I can't offer any insight, other than "that's impossible". :)

I don't know too much about mesh representations, but as far as I know, the UV coordinate initial projection is not something that ends up in the object. That's just an initial set of values to choose. ...

:)

I know.  It doesn't seem possible.  But.. there it is.  As far as an object being UVMapped, it either is or it is not.  The UVMap travels with the .obj.

Illustration 9 shows a borked up UVMap which was first generated using a Flat projection. (2d planar projection.)  The iterations I tried of distortions had no effect in producing ripping artifacts.  The one pictured is just the one I saved.  

Quote - It begs the question: Suppose I were to start with a flat projection, and then using my UV editing tools, I hand-move every vertex to the position that WOULD have been assigned by one of the other 'bad" projections. Would it now be bad or good? We'll never know, because nobody could ever move them with that kind of precision by hand, I suppose.[

I'm going to try that next along with experimenting with different UV Projections to both reproduce the effect and attempt to correct it staying within the UV map itself.