Hidden Pulleys Part 1

I encountered these windows earlier this summer and they were my first experience with not being able to see what the hell I was working with because of these hidden, and partially hidden, pulleys. I wish I had written this sooner because I have forgotten some of the subtleties involved with putting these windows back together but hopefully what I can provide with my pictures and diagram will be helpful.

This is a bank of three windows with two pretty slim mullions. The center window is about twice the width of the the left and right window. Bottom sashes are quarter inch glass which is why the weights for the bottom sashes are so huge. I had no idea the pulleys with the visible portion were actually double pulleys or compound or whatever you want to call them. That was a fun surprise!

In my drawing (forgive me, I am not a talented artist) I’ve shown what I think the totally hidden pulleys sort of look like but I never actually saw them entirely. I could look through the holes in the top of the jamb but that’s all I got.

This is part way through my removal process.
This is all you can see before I started removing things. Absolutely no clue what I’m dealing with at this point.

All the stops and trim had to be removed. Meaning the trim covering the mullions.

This is what the far left and far right pulley look like. It’s partially hidden. You can also see where I’ve remove the pocket access cover from the top of the jamb. That helped me get the new cord through.
This is the full pulley that was partially hidden. The very lower part had been broken.
Like seriously what is this thing.
The pic is dark but that’s one weight for the center window. The weight of these things just added to the level of difficulty.

I sadly don’t remember exactly how I managed to get new cords on these windows. It wasn’t the same for each sash. It was so hard and took epic amounts of patients and troubleshooting. I had my hands inside those jambs as far as they would good trying to fight gravity to grab on to sash cord and string it through so much I couldn’t even see.

The center sash was balanced with two totally obscured pulleys. Well, I could see them a little through the holes but it was very difficult to visualize.

See what I mean?

I drew this digram showing the sash cord and pulley configuration for the bottom sash weights. The top sashes are balanced the same way, just that the pulleys are behind (toward the exterior) the pulleys for the bottom sashes.

All four weights for the smaller sashes were in the far left pocket or far right pocket, respectively. So all the weights for one sash were in the same pocket. Obviously different from usual. The middle sash weights were in the mullions. Each mullion only had two weights.

Please forgive my poor artistic rendering and my life long terrible penmanship

In the end I got these all back together and they looked great. AND the client was both happy and impressed. Her home has one more bank of these three windows with the same pulley set up and we both agreed they are just fine not having new sash cords. This project was a true wrestling match and was both physically and mentally painful. But I did feel a great sense of satisfaction when I walked away from those new restored and beautifully functioning windows.

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