Determining Standard Moisture Regain Corrections in Raw Flax Fiber Batches
Standard flax fiber corrections adjust billable consignment weight to a twelve percent regain baseline derived from laboratory-verified oven-dry mass.
Fiber Tow
Secondary Material
Textile extraction processes divide flax fibers into distinct length categories based on their spinnability. The short, tangled fibers collected during scutching are known as fiber tow, representing the secondary output of the fiber preparation stage. Unlike long line flax, this material contains higher amounts of residual shive and requires additional cleaning before spinning.
It occupies a central position in the supply chain of coarser linen textiles.
Processing Stream
During the scutching phase, rollers and turbine blades beat the retted flax straw to release the long, aligned flax fibers. The impact breaks weaker fibers, which fall through the grids of the scutcher as fiber tow. The raw tow is collected and processed through carding machines that align the short fibers into a continuous sliver.
Spinning mills use wet or dry carded spinning methods to transform these fibers into yarn, depending on the desired strength and thickness.
Product Application
The coarser yarn produced from short fibers is used to manufacture durable products. These items include heavy fabrics, sacking, twine, and rustic furnishing materials that do not require the high refinement of long line linen. Because tow yarns have a higher friction coefficient, they are often used as weft yarn in blended weaves to add texture.
The market value of this fiber is lower than that of line flax, making it an economical choice for industrial textile manufacturers. In many cases, tow is also blended with synthetic fibers to produce durable upholstery fabrics that combine the natural breathability of linen with the strength of polyester, maximizing the utilization of all flax byproducts generated during decortication.