More on screens and weatherstripping

I know this stuff is boring as heck, but I'm plodding through.
Last night I came home early to clear-coat some cement bricks for work. (Occasionally I get to do fun projects like this.) In between coats, I started in on the screens again. I figured I could at least put the little patches on the ones with the tiny beak-holes.

The things I do for my favorite account.

Patched little beak-hole.

I had gotten a little repair kit, but you could do it with any left over bit of aluminum screen. You cut a square a little bigger than the hole. Fold up two opposing edges to 90º at about 3-4 rows of wires in. Pick out the wires down to the bend. Insert the little fingers through the screen, covering the hole, and then bend them over. I suppose you could cut notches in the corners and fold up all four sides, but the instructions only called for two. Getting all the little fingers to poke up through the screen, in the row of holes that you want them to is really fiddly. But all of those are done now.
I figure since I was getting out the screens, I might as well prep them for the new weather stripping (ordered today.) The best tool I found to get the stuff out was a pair of old elementary school scissors. I could get in under the strip and pry it out. Or at least chucks of it. Tedious at best, but now all the screens have been stripped of stripping.
Four of the screens are a different make. These used a tubular rubber sort of strip instead of the pile. I found out at my apartment, insects LOVE replacement windows/screens. They love all the little channels and holes for packing their nesting material into. When you don't remove and clean your screens, it becomes a multi-generational affair. These tubes were packed tight with debris.

I'm sorry to ruin your house, but you can't live here.

I stripped them off, and I'm going to try using the pile on them instead.

There are four windows that need to be rescreened, and after watching a number of videos, I decided to try my hand at it. In theory, it's pretty simple. I got a roll of aluminum screen, some spline and a tool that looks sort of like a pizza cutter at Home Depot (after confirming that they did not carry pile weather stripping, and that they did not re-screen screens.)

Implements and destruction! (Fencing pilers are handy for everything.)

In a nutshell - Strip screen, lay new screen over it (overhanging by a few inches), press channels into new screen with smooth roller end, smoosh spline down in channel to hold the screen in place with grooved roller end. Pretty simple, right?

It was still going fine at this point.

Wrong.
I was doing all right until the "press channel" part, at which point the roller tool cut right through the screen. Well, lighten up, more passes, I thought. I can salvage this. I sort of did, and ending the night wearing my headlamp I did get two screens sort of re-screened. I might be using the wrong size spline, because I had a heck of a time getting it to go into the channel. There's got to be a trick to finessing this. Practice, I guess, and not doing it at the end of a long day, in the dark, having missed the typical dinner window. I might give a slightly narrower spline a try on the next two.
This morning, they don't look so bad. A little "loving hands at home", but I think they will keep the bugs out.

Maybe by the 4th one I'll have the hang of this.