Admiral's Cabinet - Preserve, Conserve, or Restore?

[RitchieMars]

Hm, I'm considering all of these options and one thing that did stick out to me was these photofinish pieces. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what it is because where it's chipped, I can see a sort of "tear" with plain wood behind it. I'd rather not replace any of this unless I absolutely have to. I believe there's more photo-finish than meets the eye. In fact, both of the doors seem to be made this way with four separate pieces that mirror each other. The trim line that runs above that, across the front and down the sides is like this, as are those those front "shoulders." At the bottom of the cabinet, there's photofinish over the bottom centermost portion of the speaker grille. The big nice-looking sides even look like veneer, judging by one chip that's come off. If it were all solid wood like the rifle stocks I've worked on, I wouldn't think twice about stripping it down and reworking it all.

Most of the cabinet would look great if the scratches were filled in and it wasn't for all the cracks in the lacquer. How does lacquer work over old lacquer? I've heard that some people have had luck filling in their cracked lacquer with a new coat and building it up.