I don’t believe link sculpting is of long term value. It is manipulating PR so by its very nature, not something Google is going to be happy with once it gets a handle on how it is being used.
It was designed to combat comment spam and I believe, should only be used for such purposes. Anything else is an abuse of the system and we all know that these tricks come back to bite us somewhere down the line.
It sounds a nice cosy on-page SEO tweak but I worry that it is still a mis-use and will therefore be penalised at some stage in the future.
Just my HO