• Catalogs and Manuals. Perhaps the most popular feature of this web site is it's library of old catalogs and manuals on old woodworking machinery.  All too often when you acquire a "new" piece of iron, you have no documentation on how it runs or when it might have been made.  For that reason, we are always looking for any relevant "paper" items that can be added to this site.
• Articles.  We would love to have any articles you have written related to old machinery - restoration processes, how to set up a machine, proper paint colors for different manufacturers, histories of a company.  In other words, anything relevant.
• Photos.  We will be glad to host photos as long as they contribute to the knowledge base of this forum.  The only requirement with posting photos is that you must submit something in writing to be included on the page telling what it is you are showing in the photo.  A picture is worth a thousand words but if you do not know what you are supposed to be looking at it is not worth much at all.

Any content that is hosted on the Old Woodworking Machines web site will cite the person submitting it as the supplier therefore giving credit to that person.  We will also provide an e-mail link so that any questions or comments related to that material can be directed to the author/submitter (unless they request not to be cited).

Now that you know what we are looking for, here are some tips on how to submit content to this site.

Before Submitting

Before submitting any items to the Old Woodworking Machines web site, please take the time to register a Member Profile on the site. If you are not registered in our system, we cannot add your content to the site. All submissions must be linked to the member who submitted them and the only way for us to do this is to have the submitter register on the site first. Registration does not cost anything and your information will not be sold, given or traded to anybody.

Paper Items

In order to reproduce old catalogs and manuals as close to the original as possible, we like to scan the original and post it where the user can download and print a copy for themselves.  The format that has pretty much became the standard on the web for doing this is the Adobe Acrobat PDF format.  Anybody can read a PDF file through their web browser by downloading and installing the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.  To create a PDF file, you must have a copy of Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer.  Since many people do not have access to the Acrobat software, we can convert your files for you.  Here are some options for submitting paper items to the site.

Submitting Scans

Scanning Tutorial.  The preceding link it to a quick and dirty tutorial for scanning images using the popular Paint Shop Pro graphics package.

While not everybody has a copy of the Acrobat software, many do have access to a scanner.  If you can scan the pages for us, it will help speed up the time necessary to convert to PDF format and get it posted.  Here are some guidelines for scanning pages:

Resolution --- Resolution is a trade off between page quality and file size. We have played with different resolutions and looked for basically the lowest resolution that gives an acceptable print quality. Actually, somewhat to our surprise, this varies somewhat from one original document to another but for the most part we have settled on 300 dpi. Smaller resolutions are difficult to read while higher ones, while much clearer, have file sizes that are too large for people with dial-up connections to download.  If the original file has small print, you sometimes have to bump up your dpi to get a readable file but 300 dpi seems to generally work pretty well.

Colors --- Most old catalogs and manuals were printed in black and white while some were printed in color.  While color reprints are desirable by many, the addition of color to a scanned image will increase the file size drastically.  For this reason, we usually just scan everything in either "Black and White" or "Gray Scale".  Black and White is just that, only two colors - black and white.  It produces the smallest file size possible but if the original has any pictures at all, black and white does not look good.  It does, however, generally work OK for pages with just text on them.  Most of our scans are made using Gray Scale.  If you feel that color is necessary, scan using only 256 Colors (16 Bit) rather than true color to help keep the file size down.  This seems to be the best compromise between quality and file size.

File Format --- Again, the file format you save your scans in will somewhat determine how big the file size is.  Generally, the best file compressions come with either the GIF or JPG formats.  If necessary, you can send scans to us in other formats (such as TIF, BMP, etc.) but if possible, save the file in either GIF or JPG.  JPG seems to usually produce the smallest file size.

Scans can be sent to us by an e-mail attachment.  If you have any questions concerning submitting scans, please Contact Us.  We can usually help you with general questions related to scanning your paper items but please bear in mind that different scanners and different graphics programs have a wide variety of steps involved in making scans.  We may not be able to provide technical assistance for your particular hardware/software questions.

Submitting in Microsoft Word

If you have both a scanner and Microsoft Word, you can actually insert your images into a Word document, one page for each scan, and then e-mail the single Word document to us at Old Woodworking Machines.  Later versions of MS Word also have the advantage that they automatically compress the file when you save which often results in a smaller file size than the raw images would yield.  To insert an image into Word, choose Insert-Image-From File from the top menu and select the scanned image you have saved. Once we receive the Word Document, we can convert it to a PDF file and post it to the site.

Submitting it in PDF format

If you do have access to the Acrobat software, you can create the PDF file for us.  To do this, first create a Word document (or other word processor) like described in Submitting in Microsoft Word above.  Once the completed file has been made, you can then choose File-Print from the top menu and select either Acrobat Distiller or Acrobat PDF Writer as your printer and then click Print.  Instead of printing to your printer, you will be prompted to save a PDF file to your hard drive.  Remember that you must have the Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader) software loaded on your computer to use this option.  Once the PDF file has been created, you can e-mail us the file to be included on the web site.  If the file size is too large for e-mail, contact us about other options.  If you have any specific questions on how to do this, please Contact Us.

Submitting Hard Copies

If you do not have access to a scanner but would still like to submit paper content to the site, we will be glad to scan the items for you.  You can mail us COPIES of the item and we will convert it to PDF format and post it to the site.  Please only submit high quality photo copies if you choose to go this route - originals can be damaged or lost in the mailing or scanning process and we do not want to take on that extra responsibility.  If you must submit an original item, please contact us first so that we can take precautionary steps.  Copies will not be returned unless prior arrangements have been made.  You can mail the items to:

VintageMachinery.org
17 Timber Trail
Tifton, GA 31794

If sending hard copies, pease keep in mind the following guidelines:

• Only copy on one side of the page. A lot of people send copies with information on both sides of the page. This is bad for two reasons. First, sometimes the copy from the other side of the page will bleed through when scanned making it hard to read. Second, more importantly, this makes it harder for me to scan since I cannot just put the stack of papers in my automatic document feeder on my scanner!
• Do not staple pages together. If you are sending multiple items to be scanned, please use paper clips. The holes made by the staples sometimes catch together in my automatic document feeder!

Please bear in mind that if you choose to submit a hard copy, it may take some time before we can get the item scanned and posted to the site.  Our resources are limited and we can only do so much.  While we do not mind scanning the items ourselves, it does take time and there can sometimes be a backlog of work to do.

Articles

If you decide to submit an article that you write, you can submit it to us in many different ways.  We can handle most formats including a text file, HTML, Word Document, or WordPerfect Document.  The easiest way to submit the text is to just put it in the text of an e-mail.

Please bear in mind that when ever you write an article, particularly a how-to article, pictures to help illustrate what you are writing about are highly recommended.  Scanned photos can be sent by attachment to an e-mail or you can mail us an actual photo to scan if necessary.

If you have any questions concerning submitting articles, please Contact Us.

Photos

If you would like to submit photos of machinery to the site, we recommend using the Photo Index Upload Wizard.  This will put your photos in a forum where people can easily find your photos and where they will be linked to the manufacturer.

Other images related to old woodworking machines or the manufacturers who made them can be submitted to us for inclusion on the site. Please Contact Us.

If you have any questions concerning submitting photos, please Contact Us.