Sisters Albina and Pretrina Hoeft, who learned this craft as girls in Bavaria, are shown "scutching" the flax to get rid of the chaff that remained on the fine fiber inside the stem after pounding away the coarse straw.
After the removal of all the chaff from the fiber inside the straws of flax, the fiber was combed through nails on a board in order to divide the strips of fiber into single strands. This process was known as "hackling." The flax fiber was then passed through hot water so that it would break while being twisted in the final step of "hand spinning."