Flax Processing - All Fiber Arts

When the retted flax has dried, breaking separates the inner core. A flax brake looks similar to a saw horse and consists of heavy hinged wooden blades that fit into wooden grooves in the lower part. Put a large cloth under the flax brake. Open the bundles of dried and retted flax plants. Lay the plants across the grooves of the flax brake and lower the upper part of the brake sharply in quick repeated blows. This breaks the wooden part of the core and should fall to the floor, leaving the clean strick or flax fiber behind.

If the flax fibers are breaking, the flax has been over-retted. The wooden part of the core, called the boon can be used for garden mulch, burned as fuel in your fireplace or can be used in making particle-board.

Scutching

flax scutching If any boon is left on the fiber after the hackling process, it is removed by scutching. A bat-shaped or knife-shaped wooden bladeboard or blade is used to scrape the flax to remove the boon.

Hackling

Hackling separates the long line fibers from the shorter tow. A hackle is a bed of pins or nails. Secure the hackle firmly to a bench. Hold the flax firmly and one end and comb the fiber through the bed of the hackle. Be careful as the pins or nails are sharp. This is similar to carding wool. The longer fiber left over will be the strick. It should be shiny and uniform in length, with the fibers running parallel to each other. The fiber left in the teeth of the hackle can be removed and recombed to be used as tow.

The flax is now ready for your spinning wheel!

References:

The Magic of Linen, Flax Seed to Woven Cloth
Linda Heinrich, Orca Book Publishers Ltd. 1992, pp. 19-32.

Related Resources:

Old is the Rustle of Rain in the Bush Branches
"The songs of our women gathering the flax"
A poem by Jonas Mekas.
Flax Breaking
This site describes traditional customs of gathering the flax harvest in Lithuania.
Monastic Heritage Museum Work
Flax was grown, processed and spun at the Monastery of the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, MN. The handspun linen yarns were then into linens used in the chapel. This site includes an image of a tapestry of St. George and the Dragon. The work used 185 shades of colour and took about 1800 hours of labour to weave.
Jos Vanneste
Jos Vanneste gives us a tour of their spinning mill, where wet-spun linen yarns are produced in a multitude of colours and weights.
Flax
Links to flax and linen yarn suppliers and other info about flax.
Clip Art
Pictures of processing flax.