hi rowley,
i have advanced with the project quite alot and will take some new photos at the weekend.
with regards to the paintwork, the finish i eventually achieved, is in my opinion almost exactly the same texture as the original. Im happy with how close the colour match is to the original although they are difficult to compare, as the original paintwork has gone a little brown with the ingrained dirt (an unfortunate side affect of the textured surface). If you look at the picture above showing the the two headtubes side by side, you will see the area on the older bike from which i removed the head tube sticker is noticably lighter than the surrounding 'browned' paint, this is the area i used to compare my paint match as i think is the closest to the colour it would have been as new.
-prof. farnsworth.