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Notes on restringing cellular shades
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I've now had the string break on 3 of my 6 cellular shades. Thanks to Forest, et al for their notes on restringing:

http://newellgurus.com/showthread.php?tid=1211

I thought I'd add my own notes here in case they help anyone.

For the first two, I've merely bought myself some time and am still using the original string. In all cases, the string broke near the bottom where it goes through the lower rail in the window. One thing I had noticed when dealing with a leaky window in the bedroom is that when Newell installed these, they brought the two ends of the string all the way to each other and connected them with a turnbuckle for tensioning. In reality, the blind only needs to have the string attached firmly to any point past the hole in the lower sill. This means that there's almost the entire width of the window worth of extra string on the original string installation. So as long as the string breaks near the bottom, you can take the blind apart just far enough to find the broken end of the string within the lower bar of the blind. Detach the other end from the bottom of the sill and pull the broken end until you have enough to reattach each end to the bottom of the sill separately. Your still on old string, but it will buy you some time. You can also then do the next trick below to restring with new string.

On my third blind, it broke far enough up that there was not enough string to make it down on both sides. But I was still able to get the broken end back through.

It occurred to me that I really did not want to have to pull the whole thing apart again and try to thread the new line through the cellular. So this morning, I basically sewed the broken end of the string to a new string. I melted the end of each line with a lighter to make sure that the thread did not just pull the braid apart. I doubled up my thread for strength and effectively butt-end sewed the two together. One pass through the original line and two passes through the new line. I tied a single half hitch to prevent it from coming apart and then pulled gently on the opposite string. I had the whole restring done in about 15 minutes. Didn't have to remove the blind from the window, even.

I am now planning to restring all of my blinds proactively this way - clearly they are all at the end of their lifespan and are just waiting until the least opportune time for me for them to fail.

Also note Forest's comments on rotation of the brass sleeve so that you don't have a followup failure:

http://newellgurus.com/showthread.php?tid=1459


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Paul
Coach #540
2000 Double Slide, Bath and a half, Average sized fan for its age
Fulltiming for a while around CO
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