Recently, a member here posted a pic of a fire screen he had completed; one of his comments was that he had purchased the screen wire already flattened so it didn't require further stretching. I was already in the process of building a screen for a customer and had purchased a roll of wire but those comments got me to thinking so I went over to a friend who owns a 4 foot slip roll and we experimented with flattening mesh. We found out pretty quickly that we could "reverse" the set in the wire and gradually reduce the amount of bend until the mesh was dead flat - in this case, that took 4 passes, flipping the panel each time. In addition, the cold working stiffened the wire (which was plain low carbon) so that it had a great deal more resistance than in its original form.

This allowed me to fasten the mesh panels in each door without further stretching, which in itself takes a lot of extra time plus the results are never as clean because there are always a few small kinks here and there in mesh that has been flattened only once then stretched.

I've got a couple pics of the finished screen coming soon from the customer and although I doubt the flatness of the screen can be seen very well, I can confirm that this method works well on mesh that has been pre-rolled, kinked or inadvertently bent. Although the end results are not quite as tight, this screen came out cleaner and flatter than anything I've built using stretchers.

good tip tip know !  since I have 4' rolls  thanks never thought of that