Fish line in day/night shades

skipnchar wrote:
Monofilament line will cut like a knife and has a chance of damaging your shades. I would recommend using a very soft cotton thread.

Thanks for the info! I thought about going with fishing line last time the shades were restrung, but just used string and now glad I did!

As a final word, I might ask a question and/or opinion. Will monofilament offer enough friction to keep the shades from sliding down?

I've used braided dacron (that's a plastic) to restring. It was either 80# or 40# test that had the same thickness as the original string. Was sold either as catfish line or offshore saltwater line, one was black, the other beige, used whichever was beige.

I would be wary of monofilament or any of the fused braided "super" lines because the smaller diameter and slipperiness will require you to put more tension on the strings to get the friction you need, and the line will wear through the grommets just that much faster.

You can get the proper line through several sources, there are people selling kits on the WWW. I chose to go with a braided fishing line with hopes of better wear properties for the line itself.

thank you all...in the end I have ordered 1.6mm cord from Fix My Blinds but all your input was helpful and most appreciated

What do you dudes use on your fishing reels if your using all you line on the shades?

Mono over some short but undefined time will get brittle and break etc from UV.
However I gave my Cousin, her late Father's old fishing reel with some black Dacron, on it, now sixty years old. It wasn't exposed to much sun though or any.

I got the proper cord at Joann Fabrics.. Much easier that way.

I've used 10 lb. fishing line with success..........

But next string that breaks I'm going to use braided dacron as suggested by 'harold1946'.

I think that will work much better than the monofillament.

Monofilament line will cut like a knife and has a chance of damaging your shades. I would recommend using a very soft cotton thread.

Monofilament line over time would cut the grommets/guides (nylon) I believe. I used 120# braided kite string, 400 yds was about $13. I no longer have to do that since I got tired of doing them each about every 12-15 months, so we changed them all out for United Shades' roll up day night shades. At the time our RV was built, Tiffin was using brass grommets as guides on their shades instead of the nylon guides that United Shade used in their. The brass guides caused more failures for us as fulltimers since most of the shades were cycled 3 or more times a day. But I tried many strings and found the 120# nylon braided kite string was superior to all others.