For my information: How to adjust for a particular pressure without springs ?
I should have been more clear. I think this is almost always a thing that you want to avoid. Unless you have made the same cheese 100 times in a row, you won't know exactly the pressure you need. The key to good pressing is to let the cheese drain while the rind is open. Nobody can tell you how much weight your cheese needs to close slowly over a period of 2 hours or so. It's just impossible to know. Literally, every recipe that includes pressing weights is wrong because they haven't seen my curds.
Since you have to inspect the curds frequently to ensure that the rind is closing, but closing slowly enough that the cheese will drain properly, there is no point in having springs. After the cheese has drained and the rind is closed, it doesn't matter how much weight you put on it. Not only that, but the cheese does not compress particularly after that point. You can screw it down as much as you want and it will basically stay at that pressure.
That's not to say that I don't use *some* feedback. When I'm screwing down the press, I look to see how much whey is being pressed out. You want the whey to bead, but not run. If it is running, you are over pressing. Often for the first 15 minutes, you should not have *any* weight, because the whey is already running. As I screw down the press, you can feel some pressure on the cheese. At some point it is "finger tight". This is often my top weight to put on a cheese. If I need more, then I get the wrench out and start counting how many turns of the wrench I used. But even then, I don't record that information. The next cheese I make will be different (I'm not *that* consistent that I need exactly the same weight for each cheese).