More re-stringing

We did the re-stringing on 3 shades today! We are getting better at it and have a process that works pretty well. The hardest part is melting the two strings together - I have to light the flame, Dwayne has to keep the strings in the flame long enough to catch fire and then bring the two ends together, I have to release the flame and wet my fingers and roll the two melted ends together. I have a bit of burn callous on my right thumb and forefinger at this point. I guess it is good that we don't have any fingerprint scanner security devices! (I wonder if a fingerprint reader would be impacted by the callouses...)

The only odd situation with the three we did today was the large one from the back window on the drivers side - it turned out that one part of the top of it is not well caught into the header:

The part that was not well caught to the header...

Another view

One of the nice things about this situation was that we could see how the strings were managed under the header - there is a plastic feeder that the strings go through the top of the fabric, and there would have been a grommet on the top (it is loose from where it should be attached).

Vacuuming the back of the shades.

We just have two more shades to do but decided that we had done enough today. The remaining shades are working ok, but we figure that the strings might be better off replaced since they are 17 years old and may have been subject to hot conditions and sun baking.

We may see about taking the back shade to the company that made them if we end up near Denver later this year, to see if they can correct that part that is not attached correctly. It isn't very noticeable when the shades are hung, but it would probably be better if it were corrected.