Thank you for your kind words about the Craftsman DVD set.
I tried to make it the highest quality possible within the confines of reasonable file size, and economics. In the beginning I was making it for my own use. The catalogs themselves, especially the older Sears Big Book catalogs, can be dirty, musty, and have brittle pages. I would have to wash my hands after looking through them. It was also time consuming to just pick out the Craftsman products from the Sears Big Book catalogs that weren't in the Tool Catalogs, when thumbing through the pages. I started collecting some of the old Craftsman ratchets in the beginning. Then I started buying a few catalogs. At some point my OCD took over and I ended up searching daily for every Craftsman tool catalog ever produced. I didn't stop there. There were a number of years where Sears didn't produce any tool catalogs. So I ended up in bidding wars and bought every Sears Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter Big Book catalog from 1927 to present. I painstakingly took apart all the Big Book catalogs so I could produce high quality scans on all the Craftsman product pages. I also included about a dozen pages from each Big Book catalog with bits of fun stuff, nostalgia and Americana. For instance, there are pages in there from the 1950's where you could buy (from Sears) a baby alligator, "harmless when small, won't outgrow it's pen for five years", donkey, mule, monkeys, exotic birds and so much more.
Scanning the catalog pages was just the first step in preparing the catalog files. Each cover was digitally restored to its former glory. All the writers marks and printing artifacts, along with ragged edges were all removed. As needed, the pages were rotated, cropped, and all the pages that had centerfolds spread across two pages were all aligned to look nice. I had zero experience before taking on this project, and at times it could be very frustrating, and of course, very tedious. I can say in the end I am very happy with it. I think all the catalogs look visually beautiful from cover to cover.
Plus I have included a number of pre Craftsman catalogs. How about a multi-station woodworking tool setup for making wagon wheels.
John, do you agree with what I have written? Or would you say it is mediocre in quality? :)
David Maher MrCraftsmanTools@aol.com
It is currently on Ebay. If anyone wants to skip Ebay and Paypal, that would drop my cost by $10 and I will pass along the savings. $65 with free postage.