vlas repelenAfter scutching is hackled. There are different sized heckling combs or heckles. A heckle is a bed of "nails" .Here, the fibers are mixed. The long flax fibers are carded and combed to make them suitable for the spinning of fine yarns.

The flax yarn is woven into cloth and bleached. The short fibers are also used for the production of rope that is obtained by twining.

Spinning
The flax plant has as many short as long fibers. The short nowadays are dry to moderately fine -spun yarns after chemical treatment.

The finest long fibers are spun in wet spinning machines (the wick runs here through warm water) to fine yarns, by the water they got so much cohesion, they have little protruding fibers. They are suitable to be used during weaving as warp (without to be glued (strengthened) first. This made the flax yarn better warp than cotton yarn that has to be amplified first if single-wire.

Until the eighteenth century, flax fiber in Europe was next to wool the main raw material for textiles. Since the nineteenth century, it has been supplanted by cotton.