Never heard of that, and I’ve had several courses weaving cotton, from three different and highly regarded weavers :/ And have used an Ashford table top loom in each case, too.
If the fabric needs to be especially well beaten - for instance, a cotton floor rug, a strap, or upholstery - then it may be that a beat harder than the loom’s own beater might be needed, depending on the loom. If you’ve got a Harris or a Weavemaster, or something very robust like those, or a floor loom, I can’t see this being necessary, but an Ashford table top loom then maybe. Or if you are using an Ashford rigid heddle, perhaps they think the heddle wouldn’t take the strain.
To beat hard, beat on the open shed and again on the closed shed. We did do this on the weaving cotton tea towels course, where you want a fairly firm fabric.
If you are using a stick shuttle, and want a really strong beat, you could use the shuttle to beat as you would on an inkle loom. But don’t put too much yarn on the shuttle or it will make it too fat to beat strongly. You would of course need a shuttle that’s wider than the fabric to do this effectively and evenly. On the closed shed, I think, or you risk the last pick attaching itself to the shuttle and coming back out again
. So the sequence would be : *pick, beat with loom, change shed, beat with loom, beat with shuttle, repeat from *
Michael Williams makes shuttles for inkle looms which have a chamfered edge, so they can really get in there and give a strong beat. (So that’s for making braids / straps.)
What are you going to make?