Figure 35. Amanda Appel scutching under the guidance of Birgit Thomsen.
Discussion For the 3 timed batches it appears that a quite consistent pattern emerges. 7.6 g was scutched per minute in batch 1 while 10 g was scutched per minute in batches 3 and 4. The slightly lower number in batch 1 is probably due to the learning curve as batch 1 was the first to be scutched by the team. The loss of material during this process was slightly different from batch to batch. Batches 1 and 2 were consistent with respectively 24.4% and 21.2% lost while batches 3 and 4 are the high and low mark of these experiments with respectively 31.2% and 16.4% lost. The small(er) loss of material in batch 4 is probably an indication that this batch has been processed better in the previous breaking stage. There was a limited amount of waste in this process, compared to the breaking process, probably due to the fact that so much of the waste products had been separated already but also due to the seemingly inefficient way of performing this task. A lot of shives were left on the fibres even after they had been scutched for a long time and often the shives would just be beaten flat instead of falling off, leaving a large amount of waste to be taken out during the next process of heckling. Perhaps other methods of scutching should be tried in other experiments to see if these are more efficient or more time should be spent scutching each handful, although this was tried to some extent and did not seem to help too much.
Heckling Heckling is the sort of safety net in the whole flax production process. It can, and should correct all the mistakes and issues which were not dealt with during the previous steps. If, for instance, the flax was not properly retted and it was difficult to remove the majority of shives from the fibers, or the flax was not thoroughly broken, heckling will still be able to draw out the usable fibers for spinning. The quality of the fibers also becomes most apparent during heckling. Well processed fibers will come out long and resilient, those which were not fully retted or dried before processing will break easily and become badly tangled. Ideally, fibers before heckling should be largely free from shives and this process should only serve to detangle, smooth and separate the long and short fibers. However, this is rarely the case, and therefore the process more often becomes a rescue mission rather than just a tidying process.
55