That's true, but I can't think of any substance that'd adhere with any fidelity without destroying the wood. At some point, there has to be a detail left to a subsequent artist or damage to the artifact. In my case, it'd be tweaking the digital copy. In yours, it's fiddling with the "cover" to express the right details. It (or the alternative, loss of fidelity) seems to be an inherent part of the problem in that anything you do can only serve to cause damage or introduce noise.
Something I forgot about, though, that may only need the right magic substance (something that won't adhere to wood, specifically), what they call "fluid scanning." It's an approach used to get three-dimensional scans by filming video of an object being slowly and smoothly immersed in a contrasting liquid. Each frame then goes through kind of an inverted chromakey process, leaving you with a series of stackable outlines.
It's pretty clever, except for the part where you need to find something pourable that contrasts strongly to the wood but wouldn't cling to it or get absorbed to cause more damage.
Personally, I'd find a first-generation reconstruction close enough to "original print."