Second shade restrung - not quite as easy

We decided that we would work on restringing the back shades today. We took the one down on the passenger side of the bus. The ones in the back are a bit wider than the ones in the front, and have 4 strings for each of the two shades instead of three.

We got it laid out on the counter and realized that we were going to need to clean the plastic off the backing.

The label from the manufacturing process - it identifies the shade as Infinity Hi-Tech Shades by DSC - we were going to need this information...

On the back of the roman shades, there is a plastic material on the top and bottom of the folds. The plastic on the top part of the fold has gotten brittle, probably from sun damage over the years. With the first shade that we did last week, we had taken it down while we were in Cottonwood and put it onto the picnic table and did a good cleaning of the shade, including removing the brittle plastic. With this one, we had to do the cleaning before we got started on the restringing. You might be able to see some of the brittle plastic between where the strings go through and the eyelet to the right. We find that if we don't clean it off, it just continually flakes off and gets into the window tracks.

 That picture also shows the larger of the two balls that are used to hold the end of the string - the larger one is at the bottom of the top (Roman-type) shade. There is a smaller ball inside of that one, and there is a smaller ball at the bottom of the lower (day) shade, also.

As we got started on this shade, we noticed that one of the 4 sets of strings was a little different - it had a button instead of the plastic eyelet thing at the bottom of the Roman shade, and it appeared to have just a metal bead with a knot beyond it instead of a metal ball over the knot as we had found on the other shade, and as was the case with the other strings on this shade. We wondered whether one of the strings had been replaced in the past... it doesn't look like the way the factory would have done it.

Getting those balls over the knots open was the most challenging part of the restringing, so we decided that it might be just as well to replace all the clamp-over-knot balls with metal beads. We remembered seeing a sign for a bead shop not far away and made a trip out there to see about getting metal or glass beads (not plastic).

We found the bead shop, and showed the folks there what we were looking for. A guy there said that what we wanted were "crimp covers" - and that Michaels would have them, but they didn't have them at that bead shop. We drove over to Michaels and found crimp covers (something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Crimp-Sterling-Silver-Plated-Copper/dp/B00BWI81CI/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1487642076&sr=8-19-spons&keywords=crimp+tube+covers&psc=1 ) but we didn't think they were exactly the same. We looked at glass and metal beads, but Dwayne recommended that we get lead fishing sinkers instead. So... we headed to Walmart and got fishing sinkers.

As we were heading back toward the bus, we saw a car that I thought Jimmy might like to see:

The license plate seemed to imply that it was a 56, but the surround of the license plate says 1957... I'm sure Jimmy will know which it is! (Although I only got pictures from the back, which may make it more difficult.)

When we got back to the rig, we went back to work on the shade. We started on the lighter weight cord for the day shades, melted the first old string with the new string, started pulling, and... it came apart in the upper part of the shade! The part that we had not taken apart before, because we had managed to melt the strings together and get them successfully pulled through. This shade was going to be more difficult!

We decided that we would need to take the cord locking mechanism out to be able to get the top assembly slid off.

The cord lock mechanism for the Roman shade part came out really easily, but the day shade part wouldn't come out. Do you see the little clips on the two sides just under the front plate of the locking mechanism? We couldn't get one of those to un-clip on the day-shade end. We finally got it out far enough that we could slide the top of the Roman shade out about 8-10". We then used a piece of thin wire like a needle (the needle we got from the shade repair folks was too rigid to thread it through where we needed it) and after a LOT of work, got that one string pulled through.

 At one point, I looked up "infinity high tech shades dsc" (from the label) and found that the company still exists. I called and asked if they had any clues on how to get the cord lock mechanism out (I figured that we had somehow done it the right way by accident on the Roman shade end and that there was some secret that they could tell us). I talked with two very nice people, but they said there wasn't any secret, but it was something that a blind repair person should be able to do. I started looking up blind repair places in Yuma, when Dwayne figured out how to get the top rail to slide enough to give us some other options.

Another view of the cord lock mechanism.

After having all that problem with the very first string, we were VERY careful with each of the rest of them, pulling them through to a 3 different stopping points instead of trying to pull them all the way through in one motion. It took a lot longer, but was finally done!

Whew! We were hoping to get both back shades completed today, but only got one... it seems to be working well now though, so we're happy, and happy to have it completed!!!