The Flax Engineer

When I went to the BPGV to pick up the Galego Flax seeds, and explained Eng. Ana Maria Barata what we intended to do and explore through this idea of growing and processing our own fibre in Serralves, she told me about this colleague of hers that worked at the seed bank years ago: at some point, he had worked in a project related to flax and had developed some equipment that we might find interesting.
That colleague of hers was Eng. António Silva and that project, that he developed around 1993, aimed at optimizing flax processing for fiber purposes, in a small scale production. At the time, industrial production had ceased many years before in our country, so the picture was more or less the same as it is now: folkloric groups and such growing flax for recreational purposes and no more than a few people that process it with quality, but that have a rough time making a profit from their work.
So, the goal was to optimize the most “painful” parts of the process: mostly scutching and combing, which are very time and labour demanding, but also the spinning part.
One of the machines created was a mechanical scutcher entirely based on an irish model. This was manufactured by CENFIM for the cost of the materials alone (they offered the labour) for a few Craft Associations that showed interest at the time. They also manufactured what the engineer refers to as electric “spinning benches”.
We’re in a different century now, and it is a lot easier to find and buy small and middle scale fibre processing machinery, if you look outside Portugal. But even now, except for a few rare cases, the picture in Portugal is mainly artisanal and, above all, very rustic.
It’s not common to find equipment like the one Eng.Silva developed, and he did it in the 90’s, so I find it exceptional.
The equipment didn’t spread out at the time, but some of the people involved in the project acquired it, and still use it in the present day. Yes, this means that there are people that have these machines in their home, and also electric spinning machines custom made locally, twenty years ago.
The fact that the scutcher was made based in an irish model, means that its size is planned for foreign flax varieties, that are taller and more profitable. Using this machine meant not using it with a local flax variety that doesn’t grow more that 40cm, like the Galego Linen. The studies carried by Eng.Silva concluded that optimizing small scale fiber production meant not only the introduction of better equipment, but also of a more profitable flax variety.

One of the importante things about Eng.Silva is that his knowledge in not purely academic or purely experience based. When he worked on flax, growing it was part of his job, but his academic background and personal interest for the subject, allowed him to acquire quite some knowledge about the subject.
I left this meeting with books written by Flávio Martins about growing flax for fiber purposes, copies and originals of the studies Eng.Silva carried on and answers to so many technical doubts that I had before sowing the flax. I also had the opportunity to browse the flax project’s photo album, that I talked about above.
Very typical of a person that has more than a professional interest on the matter is to find traces of his interest for linen around his house. Eng.Silva had kept two different models of the electric spinning wheels he had made, a Louet spinning wheel still in the box (brought from Holland by a truck driver in the 90’s) and one of those big mechanical “irish type” scutchers in one of his storages.
All precious things!

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[01.04.2015 / This post refers to the investigation and activities developed during the Saber Fazer em Serralves program]