I was in the middle of some major planting last night when this thread came to mind. I just re-read my post ^^ and want to: 1) Thank OGR for laying his method out for us. Missed that 1st time around. 2) make certain that "old fashioned" isn't misconstrued. Planting a seed in soil is a time honored technique but germinating w/ T-5s is anything but old fashioned.
I have an RO water superstition but didn't realize there was also a Fiji, (not Fuji, my bad) one.
I've gone to sheet metal surfaces for my germ cart/shelves. The metal holds some of the radiant heat given off by the t-5s that would be otherwise lost. It keeps the soil temp a bit warmer which is a good thing.
I push a wooden skewer, (ie for shish-ka-bobs) down 1/2" and rotate it a couple of times to shape the hole like an inverted cone. I scoot the seed off of the edge of the hole w/ the skewer and 8-9 times out of ten, the seed will drop in the right way w/ the root side down. I'm sure there are 100 ways of getting a seed to properly drop into a hole- this is just the way I do it.