Horizontal Cordless Blinds - Fix Broken Spring Cord

Update: This broke a week later. The cartridge won’t hold tension. I suggest rethreading to mod it into a corded blind. There are more than a few tutorials on how to do that out on the interwebs already.

My advice: just don’t. That’s right. I did it. I fixed my Home Depot Cordless Blinds, and I saved $45 doing so, but I wouldn’t recommend doing it again. I got so frustrated and it took so long that I forgot to take instructional pictures.  And I love to take that kind of stuff. If the blinds no longer retract at all, it’s because all three cords have been severed. And if the fact that it happens all the time hasn’t lead you to seek alternative blinds, you might be able to repair them, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

If you’re still determined to do so, you need to:

1. Pull the blind from the window completely.
2. Pull out the cassette with springs and spools.
3. Wind on three new cables onto the spools.
4. Thread them back through all the other pulleys, obstacles, and slats.
5. Replace them in the window.

Pulling the blinds from the window when they won’t retract is a pain in your arse. You’ll probably need a helper and a flat-head screwdriver to pry them loose from the bracket. The slats, which are no longer retained by means of a central cord, will try to fall out everywhere. Be careful, our use this opportunity to throw them away completely. You can still do that.

Obtaining cord is a pain. You should grab the 1-2mm kind, but it only comes in 100 yard spools from Amazon. Pull the cassette with razor sharp springs and a baffling spool-and-gear mechanism from underneath the tilt cams by unseating the cams along the whole length of the blinds. Remove the retaining clips (don’t lose them!). Clean out the busted cord from the slats, blind body, and all pulleys. Examine the cassette, and reseat the spring if it’s come loose. Which it will if you play with the mechanism for more than two seconds trying to understand how it works.

 The cassette winding was the part that broke me. Play with the spools and you’ll see there are 4 in total. They counter-rotate. Without any tension on the spools, the spring is fully retracted on one spool and hooks into a cleat on the other. Play with the two thread spools, and you’ll find a slot where you can thread your cord. You’re ready to wind.

Measure out two cords, one at least 18ft long, one 9ft. Make a knot in the center of the long one and a figure 8 on a bight on the short one.  With no tension on the spools, thread the center knot into the spool slot of the outside spool, and slip the bight into the slot of the inside spool. This was the biggest pain: Wind the cords around the spools, keeping your 3 dainty cords consistently on the same side of the spool, around spools within the cassette. I did this by using a blunt tapestry needle and a long and sharp upholstery needle. Avoid tangles, twists, and misthreading. You’ll know your winding properly when you pull both cables and the they both come off at the same rate.  Then they should retract neatly as you let go. I have not tried this, you might be able to thread one side, pull it out, then just slip the other side on and wind it back as you retract the other. Leave enough leader cord out the run it from the cassette, through the body of the blinds, and down through every slat. More is always better. You can trim excess once you’re done. This would have been better with pictures. When it breaks again, I’ll add some. 

Once you have wound the spools, thread the remaining cord onto the tiny pulleys in the cassette. They should all end up on the same side, the front of the main body where the tilt mechanism comes out to attach to the wand. Then pass them through the gaps in the cam supports in the main body, around the wide pulleys and back across the metal corner posts and down the pulleys which lead down to the slats. Thread each of the three cables through every slat and down through the main bottom body. Tie off the cord with a big knot, a button, or some other means of making sure it doesn’t just pull out and unthread all your hard work. Learn from me! With each cable pulled taught and knotted, you’re ready to test.

Even if you do everything right, your test could end in disaster and you might need to start over. Don’t! Just give up! Even if you do it right, it could end up tangled in a month. It could wear out just as fast. Because this design is heinous, prone to failure, and predispositioned to these kinds of shenanigans. Turn back now!

Thought I haven’t done it myself, I would recommend the truly frustrated and also thrifty find a tutorial on how to add cords back to your cordless blinds by forgoing the silly mechanism of the cassette and spring and just attaching a cleat to the wall to hold the tension. If you can make sure the strangulation risks are minimal in your house, it’s a way to fix them without replacing the blinds themselves.

The Aviary: Huckleberry

The Aviary, Pg 404

One of the cocktails hailing from The Office, a speakeasy basement bar underneath The Aviary, this seemed simple to assemble with only one bit of complicated machinery: a sous vide.  Also, the presentation alone was intoxicating: a frothy head atop a mauve concoction? Sign me up!

I was able to obtain a chinois at a Goodwill.  The strainer and pestle separates juice from pulp and seeds.  However, the main ingredient is a clove tincture (fancy word for Everclear infused with clove). This required a sous vide as written.  As long as I've heard about them, I have never pulled the trigger on this low temperature wonder-machine (I don't have an instant pot either).  I figured it was time to lay that to rest.

There are plenty of DIY sous vide videos on the internet.  I settled on one that recommended a rice cooker combined with an industrial 110V AC temperature controller instead of a brewer's setup.  The most important part of this setup is the type of heated pot you use.  I couldn't use my crock pot, for example, because it had a digital control.  Every time the power cut off and then back on, it would not return to heating the pot.  My manual-switch rice cooker worked like a charm, however.  Then, for $20 in parts from the hardware store and $20 for the temperature controller on Amazon, I had a safe contraption through which to control my rice cooker and keep a pot of water within 2 degrees of a specific temperature for any length of time (perhaps "safe" is relative; use wire nuts and an electrical box when playing with mains, kids; the picture below shows iteration one with no cover).

The clove tincture was dead simple but extremely smelly.  $1 in bulk cloves and some Everclear got me a half dropper full of the cloviest drops the ever passed your nose. A word of warning: toasting the cloves is a horrendously smokey business.  Do this with a hood on full blast or outside.  We had to open all the windows and run for coffee.  I already had a vacuum sealer so I dumped the toasted cloves into a bag, poured on the alcohol, and dunked it into the rice cooker for an hour.  I decanted the result into an amber bottle with dropper and savored the aroma (which wasn't hard; it was everywhere).

The rest of the recipe was fairly simple.  Huckleberries don't come into season until August, so we went with blackberries from Mexico.  The syrup came together easy with a few gradually finer strainings.  6oz made 166g of juice.  Amaro Averna from Total Wine, Bombay Gin on sale, and Angostura bitters I already had on hand completed the boozy bits.  A quick trip through a shaker came out with a pink foamy pour that gradually separated into mauve and foam.  The bitters and pepper hit our nose, and the herbal hit of the drink completes it.  It's just sweet enough with off-season blackberries to be pleasant without being overpowering.  As we drank, we noticed the colors change and aromas deepen.  Very fun and dynamic drink.

A second round (can't waste syrup, after all) made with vodka toned down the herbal nature.  This will probably be the version I make for myself unless the guests are already gin drinkers.  Too close to 'too much' pine.  A friend suggested ditching the clove and replacing it by painting the glass with Chartreuse.  Either way, this seems to be a reliable cocktail to just have on hand.  Freezing berry syrup during their season in 2oz portions and the huge amount of clove tincture I have left over means it will be quick to assemble with a fun story to tell while we shake it up.

The Aviary: Knickerbocker

The Aviary, Pg 249

One part of a tiki flight, I was recommended to try this this based on the raspberries.

While the recipe as written requires a pacojet, I don't have $5000 just to get deliciously drunk.  I tried an ice cream maker to make the slush instead with fantastic results.  The instructions say to freeze the mix and rum separately and process together, but a spin in the ice cream maker brought it to just enough slush for a small batch.

The real winner here is the recommended rum.  My first "drink until you hurl" experience was with coconut rum, and I've avoided the spirit ever since.  The Zaya Gran Reserva aged rum has really caught me by the nose, however.  It has just enough molasses to be delicious, and the aging has mellowed it considerably compared to its frat-boy cousin.  I'll definitely be stocking this as a rum of choice (unless the book turns up something even better).