I would also like to note that, aside from some Light Oak colored Minwax I got on sale when Home Depot was closing them out, I have no blonde wood stuff in the finishing department. I never really liked the blonde furniture phase from the 50's.

Ok! It ends up that this is actually called a limed oak finish. On the This Old House site they noted that for a small repair instead of buying a big can of liming paste, you can use white paste shoe polish. I'm concerned how the shellac will stick to wax or shoe polish, so I think I will use sone kind of white latex paint. For the veneer repair, a guy on YouTube said it's red oak and had a piece he said he got at Home Depot (I think) and it did look like a goid match.

Another site I looked at had a bronze wire brush they used to make the grain more prominent, which gives more space for the lime paste to fill, which emphasizes the grain.

I'll try to take a lot of pictures so I can do a tutorial for the next person with a 401 cabinet that lived with anticoaster people. (Monsters!! Lol.)