I am trying to fix up my Davis, and it is looking better... the black areas no longer have that icky sticky orange peel texture, BUT, some of the areas with the decals seem stubborn, and despite going very slow and cautious, I ended up with a bit of silvering. It may be the damaged shellac is adhered so strongly to the decals that anything affecting the shellac will damage the decals. Talk about a catch-22. It's made me nervous to continue!
I have been focusing instead on cleaning and rust-removal of the metal pieces.