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The City of DuBois
Chapter 6
Page 032
Page 32 PIONEER HARDSHIPS
When this upper head was completed, it would weigh possibly twenty
pounds. The operator took hold of the pin in the loose head, raised
the upper jaws to a perpendicular position, grasped all the flax he
could span in his left hand, laid it at right angles across the
lower jaws of the brake, as near the rear head as possible, and then
brought the head down with a crushing blow. The effect of this was
to break the woody fibre of the flax, leaving the lint in the hands
of the operator. The process of manipulating the jaws was repeated
until the operator believed that that end of the flax was thoroughly
broken, when he reversed the flax in his hand and broke the other
end.
Before proceeding to break the flax a rude platform was erected four
or five feet from the ground by placing lath, eight or ten feet in
length and eight or ten inches apart, on trestles or standards
erected for that purpose and laying the flax upon it. Under this a
wood fire was built, the heat of which dried the flax thoroughly so
it would break more easily.
After the flax was broken, the process of
scutching was used for separating the shoves from the lint which had
not been taken out by the process of breaking. The scutching block was a piece of white
oak about two feet long and 8" x 12". About the middle of this block
was inserted in a perpendicular position a white oak board eighteen
inches long and a foot wide, and planed to a sharp edge at the top.
A scutching knife was made of white oak thirty inches long, x 4",
planed to a sharp edge, with a handle on one end for a hand hold.
The scutcher took the broken flax in his hand, laid it across the
top of the board and brought his knife down on the opposite side
from his hand, thus separating the rest of the shoves from the lint.
This process was used many years until some lazy genius invented the
scutching mill, which was made of a wheel two feet in diameter
resting upon a shaft with a crank on one end and four blades two
feet long were inserted on the periphery of the wheel, and the wheel
set on a frame upon which the scutching block, as before described,
was put on the front end of the platform. This machine was worked
with a pedal, operated by the scutcher who held the flax over the
scutching board while the wheel revolved, bringing the knives down
over the flax. After the scutching, the flax was turned over to the
wife to heckle. The heckle was made of a piece of white oak fourteen
inches long, eight inches wide, one inch thick, through which rows
of sharp nails of about four inches in length were driven, and the
nails were about one-half inch apart. This was a very formidable
instrument and not a thing upon which any one would wish to sit.
When not in use, it was protected by a wooden cap laid over it to
keep people from being scratched with the sharp nails. The flax was
drawn through the heckle by hand and the coarse tow was worked out.
When the wife wanted to make fine linen, she had a finer heckle
which took out more of the tow, leaving a very fine lint. This finer
lint was used for making thread.
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