Flax
Dressing the flax is the term given to removing the straw from the fibers. It consists of three steps, breaking, scutching, and heckling. The breaking breaks up the straw, then some of the straw is scraped from the fibers in the scutching process, then the fiber is pulled through heckles to remove the last bits of straw.
The dressing is done as follows:
- Breaking The process of breaking breaks up the straw into short segments. To do it, take the bundles of flax and untie them. Next, in small handfuls, put it between the beater of the breaking machine ( a set of wooden blades which mesh together when the upper jaw is lowered- it looks like a paper cutter but instead of having a big knife it has a blunt arm), and beat it till the three or four inches that have been beaten appear to be soft. Move the flax a little higher and continue to beat it till all is soft, and the wood is separated from the fiber. When half of the flax is broken, hold the beaten end and beat the rest in the same way as the other end was beaten, till the wood is separated.
- Scutching In order to remove some of the straw from the fiber, it helps to swing a wooden scutching knife down the fibers while they hang vertically, thus scraping the edge of the knife along the fibers and pull away pieces of the stalk. Some of the fiber will also be scutched away, this cannot be helped and is a normal part of the process.
- Heckles In this process the fiber is pulled through various different sized Heckling comb. A heckle is a bed of "nails"- sharp, long-tapered, tempered, polished steel pins driven into wooden blocks at regular spacing. A good progression is from 4 pins per square inch, to 12, to 25 to 48 to 80. The first three will remove the straw, and the last two will split and polish the fibers. Some of the finer stuff that comes off in the last hackles is called "tow" and can be carded like wool and spun. It will produce a coarser yarn than the fibers pulled through the heckles because it will still have some straw in it.
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Flax as a symbolic image
- Common flax is the national flower of Belarus.
- Flax is the emblem of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
- The flax plant, in a coronet, appeared on the reverse of the British one pound coin to represent Northern Ireland on coins minted in 1986 and 1991.
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Flax in popular culture
- In English, blond hair is traditionally referred to as "fair" or "flaxen". The expression "tow-head" or "toe-head," used to describe a person with blond hair, comes from the name for the fine, oft-tangled fibers left behind in the hackles, when processing flax into linen.
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
- ^ Alister D. Muir, Neil D. Westcot, "Flax: The Genus Linum"., page 3 (August 1, 2003)
- ^ Flax nutrition profile. Retrieved on 2008-04-24.
- ^ a b Mayo Clinic (2006-05-01). Drugs and Supplements: Flaxseed and flaxseed oil (Linum usitatissimum). Retrieved on 2007-07-02.
- ^ Malcolmson, L.J. (2006-04). Storage stability of milled flaxseed. Retrieved on 2008-04-24.
- ^ Chen J, Wang L, Thompson LU (2006). "Flaxseed and its components reduce metastasis after surgical excision of solid human breast tumor in nude mice". Cancer Lett. 234 (2): 168–75. doi:. PMID 15913884.
- ^ Thompson LU, Chen JM, Li T, Strasser-Weippl K, Goss PE (2005). "Dietary flaxseed alters tumor biological markers in postmenopausal breast cancer". Clin. Cancer Res. 11 (10): 3828–35. doi:. PMID 15897583.
- ^ "Flaxseed Stunts The Growth Of Prostate Tumors", ScienceDaily, 2007-06-04. Retrieved on 2007-11-23.
- ^ Dahl, WJ; Lockert EA Cammer AL Whiting SJ (December 2005). "Effects of Flax Fiber on Laxation and Glycemic Response in Healthy Volunteers". Journal of Medicinal Food Vol. 8 (No. 4): 508-511. doi:.
- ^ a b Flaxseed and Flaxseed Oil. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Retrieved on 2008-01-03.
- ^ Schilcher, H. and Wilkens-Sauter, Zietschr. Fette-Seifen-Anstrichmittel, pp. 113-117, Aug. 1986
- ^ Wardey, A. J. (1967). The Linen Trade: Ancient and Modern. Routledge, 752. ISBN 071461114X.
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References
- USDA profile of flax
- The 1881 Household Cyclopedia
- Alternative Field Crops Manual: Flax
- Health Benefits of ground flax seeds from World's Healthiest Foods
- Storage and usage instructions for ground flax seed
- Flax Seed Oil
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External links
- North Dakota State University picture comparing flaxseed oil fatty acid content with other oils.
- University of Arizona Text: Flax Culture and Preparation; Bradbury, Fred; Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 187 pages; copyright estimated 1895-1912, file sz 11.1 MB (PDF). On-Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics.
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