Hackling
Also searched as: heckling, hackle, heckle, hatchelling, flax combing, line flax, tow
Hackling, or heckling, combs scutched flax or hemp through progressively finer beds of steel pins, splitting and straightening the fiber bundles and separating long line fiber from short tow.
In detail
Hackling is the last of the three steps of dressing flax, after breaking and scutching. A handful (strick) of scutched fiber is drawn repeatedly through hackles, starting with coarse, widely spaced pins and moving to fine, closely spaced ones. The pins split fiber bundles into finer strands, straighten them and remove remaining woody particles (shives) and impurities. The long, parallel fiber that survives is line, used for fine linen yarns; the short, tangled fiber caught in the pins is tow, which is carded and spun into coarser yarns.
The science and numbers
A hackle is a bed of long, tapered, tempered steel pins set at regular spacing in a wooden block, and sets grade from coarse to fine. Mechanically, the pins pull bundles apart along the weaker regions between elementary fibers and break out residual shive, while fibers too short to stay in the operator's grip are retained in the pins as tow. Finer hackling therefore improves line fineness and cleanliness but lowers line yield, a trade-off every processor balances. Mill hackling machines comb the strick with moving pinned bars, and the resulting line is formed into long slivers for spinning.
A practical example
A living-history demonstrator pulls scutched flax through a coarse hackle, then a finer one. Each pass leaves a fluff of short fiber in the pins, and the strick in her hand becomes smoother, finer and glossier. She sets the tow aside for a rough utility yarn and keeps the line for fine thread.
What to distinguish
Hackling is combing of bast fiber, not of wool, although the purpose is similar. It does not remove the pectin that binds elementary flax fibers; that depends on retting and, in the mill, on wet spinning. The ratio of line to tow depends on retting and scutching quality, so it is not a fixed property of the plant or variety.
Origins and history
Hand hackling was a skilled trade in the flax-growing regions of Europe, and the tools survive in museum collections, including a set of hackling pins dated to about 1850 at the Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum. 'Hackle' and 'heckle' are variant forms of the same tool name, and the worker was known as a hackler or heckler. Powered hackling machines later took over the task in linen mills.
Related terms
Sources & further reading
- Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum: Hackling pins for combing flax, c.1850
- Library of Congress, Folklife Today: Just the flax
- Flaxland: Breaking, scutching, hackling flax
Technical references reviewed 2026-09-22. Examples are illustrative. Industry organizations and manufacturers describe their own fields; their references are not independent product endorsements. Figures are approximate and depend on the stated test conditions.