Message -- MIME -- Combine Messages

Question

I encountered the text of the subject line in an email that I sent to myself from a copy machine. The copy machine was suppose to scan the pages, convert them to PDF, and send them to my email account. Apparently the PDF attachment was too large for one email, so the machine/e-mail client split the PDF into 3 e-mails using MIME/Base64. I understand this is a coding/decoding method of taking non-text files and transmitting them over the internet as text files to later be decoded and reassembled.
So I had three files and none of them seemed to be worth a darn, but all were about 2 MB. After much ado, here is the process that eventually allowed me to read and pring my PDF file:
Click on Part1/X in Apple's Mail program, where X would be the number of parts the file was split into.
Go to View in the menu, mouse over Message, and click on Raw Source (Cmd-Opt-U)
Click in the message area (where the jibberish text is) and select all (Cmd-A)
Open a text program such as TextEdit (or I used the freely available TextWrangler) and paste. Then save the file in a suitable (but temporary) location.
Repeat this process for each of the X parts. You will make a seperate file for each part. Just concatenating each part in the same file doesn't work! Trust me I tried.
Now you need this program I found called Decoder 4.0.2 (http://www.etresoft.com/). It cost $20, but it worked, so I paid. It is shareware. It's only 1.7 MB so it downloaded readily.
After installing, run the Decoder program. A small window with the words, "Drag files and folders into this window to decode them" tells you the program is running.
Finally, do just that. Select all of the files just created and drag all at once into the decoder window. In a flash, the Decoder program makes a folder with the subject of the email and inside is your reconstructed file. In my case the 4 MB PDF.
I'm not claiming it's easy, but when the alternative is not having the file at all, I'm willing to jump through the hoops!
Power Mac G5   Mac OS X (10.4.3)  

Answer 1

I had the exact same issue (split messages from a networked photocopier/scanner), and searched and found this topic. However, I was put off by the $20 shareware fee, so I tried to find another solution.
I was successful in pasting the text from multiple messages into a single text document. I only left the last few headers on the first part (Content-Type, Content-Transfer-Encoding, Content-Disposition), and removed all mail headers from the later part(s). I was then able to decode it using Stuffit Expander 10.0.
  Mac OS X (10.4.7)