Growing the Flax Plant and Harvesting for Tow

[WRustyLane]

Very nice video, but I'm certainly glad we didn't have to watch the flax grow. I fast forwarded through that part until he made flax stacks. I also FF through the pulling the plants up by the roots. Then the soaking and then beat the hell out of it. Finally passed it through a bunch of nails pounded thru a board. I doubt that he got very much work spinning the flax into thread with a dummy at the spinning wheel. I just wonder what species of flax seed he planted, or is there only one kinda flax?

 

[David Veale]

I'm growing flax for the second time this year. The first batch I over-retted (it was soaking in a very biologically active pond for 7 days -- too much apparently). That started to break down the fibers such that they don't process all that well, but I have found that it makes the *best* tinder I've ever used. Built myself a german-style flax brake which works well, but I'll have to wait and try again with this year's crop before I can process it fully. Also found out that the flax brake works very well with dogbane (i.e. indian hemp -- a *very* strong fiber that grows wild across much of the country), and suspect it might work very well with nettle fiber as well.

There are different types of flax; some are optimized for fiber production and some for seed/oil production (linseed oil). There's a monastery in Pennsylvania ("The Hermitage") which you can find with a Google search that sells a fiber flax seed as well as processed fiber, and also has a number of youtube videos on the process -- everything from growing to harvest, rippling (combing off the seed heads), braking (crushing the stems to release the fibers), scutching (knocking out stem bits with what looks like a wooden sword), and hackling (combing on the "bed of nails") which separates the long fibers from the shorter "tow" fibers). I had plans to make my own hackle, but upon purchasing an antique one, I can see that it's far more than just a bed of nails. The one I've got looks to be a piece of chestnut wrapped in tin, with forged headless nails all perfectly spaced and aligned with a level of skill that would be very difficult to reproduce.

Here's a photo of the brake I built: