I've done a few too.
A question came up about removing old varnish. If you have to, you can. I just sand the spots smooth if there are cracks in the varnish. Make sure the sand paper is flush with the flat and don't sand the corners smooth. I also rebuilt one completely and used a razor blade and scraped all of the varnish to get it re-dipped. Not fun...

If that were my first re-build and I never used silk before, I wouldn't. The nylon is so much simpler than silk---fuzzies----uhggg.

I have one rebuilt banty that I take with a lot. I lend it out to guys and they love it. I got a friend of mine(wetflyguy) thats wants me to leave it in car and forget about it. He'll take care of it. I made it faster with a few tricks that I developed.

Big D