On 24/07/2015 12:29, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
newshound used his keyboard to write :
On 23/07/2015 21:21, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
If you ever think to buy a curtain track, which comes rolled up - best
avoid it like the plague.

I bought one maybe a decade ago for when I might need it, a complete kit
including the rail, brackets screws and etc. all you need and ready to
fit. Today I needed it. The suggestion was to put the track in hot water
and it will straighten out, er no it didn't. A waste of time and will
need replacing.

The trouble is it has had a long time to "creep" into the wrong shape.
You might try winding it up the other way in hot water, or pinning it
down flat on something like a patio or a felt roof on a hot day. How
long is it? If no more than 3 metres, put it inside a length of tube
(scaffold, gutter downpipe, waste pipe?) and feed steam into it from a
wallpaper stripper. You will probably still have to "reverse bend" it
while hot.

Its a 3m one, but I only needed 2x 30" lengths of it. The instructions
said hot water, so I tried hot on the entire roll, which made not much
difference. In the end I cut off the two 30" bits and just tried to get
those straight - it looks awful.

It *might* have lost its plasticiser, as someone else suggested, but I
still think you have a reasonable chance of straightening it with heat.
Ordinary domestic hot water might not be hot enough though. I am
reasonably sure that steaming would work. For a 30 inch length, another
thing you could try would be clamping it along the top of a central
heating radiator for a period of time. The type with a rectangular
header, not a round one, and not in the summer of course.