I'm about to restart my Phd In October after a bit of a false start.

I'm currently working on constructing a bibliography that covers the main themes of the project.

My question is about biblio ethics - I've found some great biblios on the web and I've been modifying these (cutting out irrelevant stuff and adding in crucial texts) to suit my project.

I've also been consulting the works cited off books I'm looking to emulate with my project. Again is it OK to admit this?

This may be a real newbie question but I'm just wondering how it will look or it its normal.

I don't think there's a problem with combing through other bibliographies when drawing up relevant things for you to read. But there would be a problem if you included them in any final bibliography (for example for a thesis) supposedly of what you had read, and you hadn't read them all.

I may be missing the point in a bit of your post, but what did you mean when you said "books I'm looking to emulate with my project"?

Emulate?

I'm talking about my hope of being able to replicate the standards of research in texts which are within my area of interest. So I'm checking out the biblios / works cited in these texts to gauge the depth of research I need to do.

I think what you're doing is fine. There could be problems if you were just using the bibliographies without changing them and then included these in your thesis - but by the time you're done, your bibliography won't look anything like what you started with anyway. You could list the sources of these bibliographies in any lists you compile for the moment, just to satisfy yourself.