It's easy to grow your own flax for bowstrings, sewing or anythingelse. Properly processed flax fibers are very strong and havelittle stretch, the two most important characteristics for bowstrings.There are different horticultural varieties of flax, one optimizedfor seed production and another optimized for fiber production.I don't know how different the two are. The variety that is easiestto obtain is the seed variety. Go to your friendly neighborhoodhealth food store and buy some flax seeds. It's that simple.
Prepare the ground and put in the seeds. How many seeds per squarefoot of ground? I give you the same answer "She who mustbe obeyed" gives when asked how long does she bake her bread,"Enough". Plant seeds very close together to encouragetall growth and few branches. Cover with about 1 inch (2.5 cm.)of soil. I mentioned what I was doing to Alice Tulloch, a fiber,spinning, knitting, fabric maven. Her advice on flax culture was"Think Ireland". The smeraldic countryside of Irelandis a result of plentiful rain and sun. I put the seeds in theground in early March and watered them almost every day. In earlyMay most of the stalks in the full-sun patch were about 30 inches(76 cm) tall and producing ephemeral pretty blue blossoms.
The flax was pulled from the ground on June 5, 2004,after it no longer put out very many flowers. Many of the stalkswere over 36 inches long. Pull, don't cut because you want thestalks as long as possible. Let the stalks dry completely beforethe next step.
Remove the seed pods by pulling the stalks througha coarse metal toothed comb.
Use bacterial decomposition to help separate the desiredbast fibers from the woody stems. The amount of time requiredto accomplish the retting is highly variable, depending on thetemperature and quality of the water used. It may take from fiveto fourteen days The general rule is that it won't be ready untilthe stuff starts to smell a little bit. I retted the flax in aplastic garbage can. After filling the can half full of tap water,I threw in a shovelful of dirt. The reason for the dirt is thatour city water contains chloramine as a disinfectant. The dirtshould overwhelm the disinfectant so that bacterial action willstart.
When you think the retting is complete, pull out acouple of stalks and let them dry. The bast fiber should separateeasily from the stem. If not, then continue the retting. Afterthe retting is completed the stalks must be rinsed and dried.
The general process of separating the fibers from thestems and preparing them for spinning. It consists of:
Breaking
Flatten the stalks with a beetle (wooden mallet). Don't hitthem so hard that you cut the fibers. Next pass them through agizmo like Figure 3 to break up the stems into small pieces.
Scutching
Pass the broken stalks through a metal toothed comb to removethe woody stem fragments. I made mine from finishing nails ina piece of hardwood. You should obtain a skein of long fiberswith practically none of the stem adhering. Tow, the short fibersthat remain in the comb, are less desirable. I bought some beautifulcommercial flax with fibers from XX to YY long. Beautiful stuff.My home grown stuff has somewhat shorter fibers. For the bestresults, scutching was done with coarse, medium and fine scutchers.
The next step is to spin the fibers into small diameter cord.The cord should be small enough in diameter that at least fourplies are needed to make up the finished bowstring. One ounce(438 grains = 28.4 grams) of fibers should be plenty to make aheavy duty bowstring. The best description of how to make a bowstringfrom unspun flax fibers to single ply cord to finished bowstringis in Tim Baker's chapter on bowstrings in Volume 2 of theTraditionalBowyer's Bible. He states that a string for a fifty poundbow made by a novice would weigh about 300 grains. A string forthe same bow made from good material by an expert would weighabout 100 grains. Other descriptions on how to make single-plycord with a drop spindle can be found on the web. The main objectiveof this article is to inspire you to grow and process your ownflax fiber. Once you have the fiber you are on your own. Thereare plenty of information sources out there on how to spin fibersinto cord and make bowstrings.Get busy!
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