I once saw what was promoted as a training a video for textile screen printers. It was one of those videos that are more harmful than helpful and produced by someone who clearly had no business claiming to be an expert.
In this instance the person was talking about frames and screens. Real industry experts talk about using tension meters to ensure that you have a suitably tense screen. The pretend expert in the video said that while he had a tension meter somewhere in the shop (he didn’t know where) it was okay to press the mesh and just make sure that it was “good and tight”. He also talked about bouncing a quarter on the mesh—the way “oldtimers” tested tension.
It’s this kind of nonsense that does the industry no favours. If you’re going to do screen printing seriously then take screen preparation seriously and use the technology available for the task. It starts with understanding the technology and selecting the best your budget can afford. There’s the frame (wood, fixed aluminum, or re-tensionable aluminum), the right mesh count for the job, the right mesh tension using a tension meter, and the right emulsion for the job.
Bouncing quarters on a screen or just pressing and guessing, might have been fine before we had today’s technology, but it’s not fine now. It’s not fine if you want to run a technologically sound shop producing consistent results in a competitive market.