Begin at the Break

Before any of the glamorous tools come out, the straw has to be broken. Flax pulled in July, retted in a trough or dew-retted in the field, dried and rippled will arrive at your door as brittle, grey-gold bundles of stalk. The woody core — the shive — clings to the fine fibres around it, and the brake is what persuades them to part.

A hand brake is a simple thing: a pair of hinged wooden jaws, blunt as a butter knife, with three or four blades set into each face so they interlock when you close them. You feed a handful of straw between the jaws and bring the handles together, working down the length of the bundle a few centimetres at a time. The shive cracks and splinters; the fibres bend and survive. If you have a bench, a larger brake fixed to it will save your shoulders.

You can buy a brake from a specialist supplier, and they are lovely things, but this is the tool most people make first. A metre or so of seasoned ash or oak, a pair of stout hinges, four bolts and an afternoon with a saw and chisel will get you there. Many spinning and smallholding groups keep a communal brake that members borrow for a fortnight each autumn, which is plenty of time to process a year's worth of straw.

The Scutching Knife and Board

Breaking leaves you with bundles of fibre still studded with broken shive. Scutching is the step that flicks it away, and the tool is a wooden knife roughly 50 to 60 centimetres long, with a rounded blade and no edge whatsoever. It works against a scutching board: a vertical plank, or a wooden stock standing on the floor with a slot or a blunt edge along the top.

You lay the bundle across the board, hold the butt end, and draw the knife downward over the fibre so the blade scrapes the shive off and lets it fall. Turn the bundle, work the other end, repeat. The knack is in the wrist — a flicking, downward stroke rather than a push. Too much pressure and you cut your own fibre; too little and nothing shifts.

A hardwood offcut, a broken spade handle or a length of ash shaped with a spokeshave will do the job perfectly well. The same knife, used flat against a block, will also serve for swingling, the gentler beating that further separates the fibres before hackling. Two jobs, one tool, and no sharpening to worry about.

Hackles: From Rough to Fine

The hackle is the tool people recognise, and the one that most repays a bit of thought. It is a block of hardwood set with rows of steel pins, and you draw the fibre through it to comb out the last of the tow and straighten the long line fibres into a shining strick.

You want at least two grades. A coarse hackle with pins around 100 millimetres long, set 8 to 10 millimetres apart, takes out the worst of the tangles. A finer hackle, with pins 3 to 5 millimetres apart, does the polishing that makes linen feel like linen. Work from coarse to fine, always drawing the fibre towards you, never pushing back into the pins.

Fine hackles are the expensive item in the kit. Coarse ones, though, are easy to make: drill a block of beech or ash and hammer in panel pins or cut nails, then blunt the tips with a file. Old wool carders are no substitute — they are far too fine and too short for flax. If you buy only one piece of equipment new, make it the fine hackle.

Spinning Flax: Wheel, Distaff and Water

Linen wants a slow, powerful wheel with plenty of twist. A Saxony or castle wheel with a good-sized drive wheel and a large flyer and bobbin will serve; a tiny modern wheel with a fast ratio will fight you all afternoon. You are aiming for a high twist at a slow rate of draw, so a big wheel turned gently is exactly right.

A distaff is not strictly necessary but transforms the job. Dress the strick onto a distaff tucked under your left arm, and you can spin from the tip of the fibre supply without stopping to rearrange a bundle in your lap. Wet spinning is traditional for flax: keep a small bowl of water beside you, damp your fingers as you draft, and the fibre smooths down into a glossy, strong thread. A sponge in a saucer works better than a bowl you keep knocking over.

Natural Dyeing Kit

Linen takes dye beautifully, but it is a cellulose fibre, so it wants heat, time and a mordant that will actually bond to it. Keep a dedicated stainless steel or enamelled pan — never aluminium, and never the one you cook in. Add a thermometer, a long wooden spoon, a sieve, a bucket, pH strips and a set of scales accurate to a gram.

Alum with a little cream of tartar is the workhorse mordant for linen; a tannin pre-bath of oak bark, gallnut or strong tea deepens the colour considerably. For plants, weld gives a clear yellow, madder a warm brick red, woad a blue that rewards patience, and onion skins, nettle and bramble will all pay their way from the hedgerow. Scour your spun linen first in hot water with a spoonful of washing soda, rinse well, then mordant and dye.

What to Borrow, Make and Skip

• Make: the brake, the scutching knife, coarse hackles, a distaff. All are timber and patience.
• Borrow: a fine hackle and a flax wheel, from a guild, a course or a neighbour, before you commit money.
• Buy: one good fine hackle, a dye pan you never cook in, and a decent thermometer.
• Skip: rippling combs, mechanised scutching mills and anything marketed as a complete beginners' kit.

Start with a small bundle — a kilo of retted straw is plenty for a first season — and let the tools accumulate around you as the fibres do. Most of the kit is wood, water and willingness; the rest can wait until you know exactly what your hands are asking for.