I’m not much on “patina” on cars, and this old piece called out for preserving some of its history, but the veneer’s condition was beyond mere patina, it was coming loose and there was a piece completely missing.
For the loose pieces I got a hypodermic needle from my veterinarian to inject hide glue under the veneer. It wasn’t quite flush with the surface even with clamping, so I sanded it level.
I lucked out on fixing the missing piece in the upper left corner. Wandering local ReStore, I came across and old table with loose veneer in the junk pile. I gave them $5 for it, pulled off a piece of veneer that closely matched the music box front, and donated it back to them.
Yeah, I know, it isn’t perfect.
While the wood finishing was going on I took care of some details.
I had to reattach the lid prop and also re-glaze the glass inner lid and repaint the frame. The lid was held on with #1 and #2 flathead wood screws. These things are tiny, and they were in tight. The slots are so narrow and shallow that I wrecked two screwdrivers and most of the screws trying to get them out.
The handles are nickel plated brass. They were dirty but otherwise in good shape and cleaned up beautifully. I replaced the rusty flathead screws with some nickel plated oval head screws I found on line.