Restorer Magazine Archives

[Pete P.]

Is there access to old Restorer articles for members? I found the index that Vinnie Peters posted and I'm looking for Restorer Magazines, Vol. 19 #2, Vol. 21 #1 and Vol. 40 #1 that have articles on distributors.

Thanks.
Pete

[Vinnie P.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

Pete,
Check your email
Vinnie

[Pete P.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

Thank you very much, Vinnie. I received the files.

Pete

[Mark E.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

What's the answer to the question?

[Vinnie P.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

What's the answer to the question?

There used to be a CD/DVD available from the NCRS Store that had all technical articles on it from every issue of The Restorer...However, the supplier stopped providing the service and a suitable replacement source for the program/setup has not been found yet. The search goes on, but it's not high on the list of priorities.
Vinnie

[Mark E.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

There used to be a CD/DVD available from the NCRS Store that had all technical articles on it from every issue of The Restorer...However, the supplier stopped providing the service and a suitable replacement source for the program/setup has not been found yet. The search goes on, but it's not high on the list of priorities.
Vinnie

Thanks Vinnie. The good news is you have access to them for a future project to make them available to the rest of us.

Happy 4th!

[Vinnie P.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

I only have the CD...but it only goes to 2013 or 2014 or so...I have the rest of the issues on a backup drive and also in the cloud

[David K.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

A lot of Restorer magazines are available in the NCRS online store. Check the website for a hard copy.

[Ian G.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

Vinnie I hope you consider the option of making them available as a service on the site, rather than selling as a DVD which always gets old. NCRS could charge a suitable sum, let's say 2.99 a month and then you'd potentially get even more money in the end as some folks subscribe and resubscribe and another small source of ongoing revenue. It may or may not make sense in the end, but another way to monetize it.

[Owen L.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

Vinnie I hope you consider the option of making them available as a service on the site, rather than selling as a DVD which always gets old. NCRS could charge a suitable sum, let's say 2.99 a month and then you'd potentially get even more money in the end as some folks subscribe and resubscribe and another small source of ongoing revenue. It may or may not make sense in the end, but another way to monetize it.

I don't even have a way to load up a CD/DVD any more! Online access to the past issues is the now and future.

[David H.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

I don't even have a way to load up a CD/DVD any more! ...

Owen

CD/DVD external drive - Best Buy $40.

Dave


"Restorer" of great utility to folks that do their own work. I wonder how many NCRS members currently do their own restoration work?

Put Restorer on-line equals making it free. Would doing this generate interest in NCRS amongst current non-members?

.

[Ian G.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

Hey David, current issues are online right now. There are ways to protect the content. Anyone try downloading those png files? It's not easy.
Anybody here have Netflix? They used to rent DVDs but not anymore. before that I went to BlockBuster. This is a good way for us to extent our reach. More than that, by putting the restorer on as a service you can get revenue over and over. How many people are going to buy that CD over and over? not me. But I can get suckered into spending $2.99 a month to have access. people spend 5 bucks a month to save videos of their security camera online. before you know it, I spent $100 over 3 years. You could conceivably save money by just going fully digital on the magazine. Give the current issue for free and you pull us all in to get the rest for $2.99 from the same site they are used to getting the Restorer. I for one don't like having stacks and stacks of magazines laying around. I like reading a book in my hands as much as the next person, but they just sit afterwards. I read the article and then I can't remember what issue something I want was in. if it was all online, easily searchable; it would be worth the money.

just my 2 cents. (...and I'm doing my own restoration)

[Owen L.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

Well said, Ian. I'd be on board with that.

[Thomas S.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

I'm currently working on a compiling all of the Restorer editions into an electronic format and will be presenting the finished product to NCRS for their review. Its a fairly large endeavor that involves old content that was previously created and indexed with some "unknown" graphic package which was then subsequently converted to PDF format.

If you are familiar with graphic design, the original source content contained layers which were flattened once converted. Impossible to separate those layers after that is done. The previous versions that were available on CD, were organized by generation. Adding content created after the 2016 period, and based on that method of organization, is too time consuming and with the built in search that Adobe Acrobat uses, you can find things much easier. There will be an index for the entire series that will also be searchable with links to each article.

50 volumes each with 4 editions, will be a very large file and likely be available on a USB through the NCRS store subject of course to NCRS management's decision to offer it. I'm up to volume 28 as we speak, fully index but not independently reviewed. It's at least 2-months away from completion. The old versions of the CD's stop at around volume 40, so roughly 10 years worth of issues have to be recreated. At some point I'll reach out to Vinnie and ask for the digital copies. It's important to realize that the PDF's are not the file format used to create these publications so it's some work to go from the creation software to a PDF.

Vinnie is correct in that there are higher priorities than this, not to mention budgetary consideration. This started out for me as a personal project for personal use. The content is copyrighted and represents a lot of effort by many people over the years, some of whom are no longer with us. The depth of information is unbelievable and during this process I can across many answers to questions I had at one time or another. A lot of information was missing from the original electronic versions so that is being re-incorporated into the final product.

If it is decided to make this available for distribution, it would have to be on a USB drive. The option to make it available online using "flipping book" will not work because of file size, and number of pages. There is also a substantial cost associated with placing documents on the "flipping book" servers.

I own an electronic component manufacturing business but have a background in IT and programming that stretches back to the early 80's. It impossible to protect the content once it is digitized. Of course you can password protect the content but that can be cracked. The most practical way would be to restrict the content to the site which, by nature, requires a login. Again, all of these methods require time and effort and therefore resources, all of which have to be considered within the context of the organizations priorities.

As they say, to be continued . . .

[Ian G.]

Re: Restorer Magazine Archives

Thanks for the info Thomas! I agree the impediment will be economics. if it doesn't make economic sense to put it up online then it shouldn't and won't happen. However if anyone really wanted to they could have put that DVD up on a torrent site and it hasn't happened that I've seen. Copying from a single DVD would be a heck of a lot easier than individual files online... So i think we have a certain amount of pride and honor in this organization that we can count on to a certain extent to keep everyone honest.