As we are having a cold snap at the moment it’s too cold to think about applying paint to the hub and brake plate so I’ve turned my attention to the saddle.
I have the frame and about half the mattress springs, not only that but one of the support springs has broken.
Recalling from years ago that there was a firm called Armours down in Bournemouth who used to supply new saddle covers and such I went on-line, looked them up on Google and found that they were still trading, its got to be over 20 years since I last dealt with them so I  was a bit surprised, but anyway I downloaded their catalogue and spent the next hour or so going through it.
Having potentially spent a not so small fortune on all the “I could just do with that” items  in the catalogue I found new mattress springs listed, along with a choice of lengths of support springs and saddle covers as well as an “assembly required” reproduction saddle.
So it was on the ‘phone to place the order, only to be met with “We can do the springs but not the top. Sorry, but we no longer do those!”, I thought it was too easy to be true!.
So it was back onto the ‘net again and I found a “copy of the large Lycette’s saddle” on a web site in India, a bit more digging and I found a UK site, “Burton Bike Bits”, that not only listed this saddle but had a couple of photographs of it posted, it looked right.
I dropped them an e-mail asking for dimensions and had a reply inside 2 hours answering my query and confirming that it was indeed a close replica of the original and at a cost of £35, that’s less than I was expecting for a cover and replacement set of springs, so it was promptly put on order!.

A problem coming up is that the thread form used throughtout the bike is the old CEI system, which is long obsolete.

This uses the old Whitworth/BSF spanner sizes and like them is sized on the bolt diameter rather than the across flats spanner size but unlike those it uses a standard 26 threads per inch pitch across the board and a 60degree thread angle.
As many of the existing threads on the bike are going to be bruised and/or corroded they’ll need to be cleaned.
I’ve already had a word with Bob the Engineer about this and he’s put me onto a trade supplier for threading tools, Tracy Tools, and sure enough they have Cycle taps and dies listed.
For £20 I can order up a set of taps for the 5 sizes between 1/4inch and 1/2 inch and another £20 will get me the matching dies. They’re in carbon steel rather than HSS but that’s alright, I’ll be using them to clean existing threads, not for cutting new ones.