A wooden box painted red sits on a table in front of a lot of paintbrushes and other small tools. The box is partially painted with scrolls and flowers in blues and greens. Chalk lines sketching out the design are visible. A couple of small, unfinished paintings are partially visible in front of the red box.

The wooden base of an old lamp. It has 3 legs, and is painted red, black, teal, and yellow. There is a ring of flax flowers painted on part of it.

Painting in progress. At left, a cover box for a flax hackle/hetchel. At right, an old wooden floor lamp re-purposed into a free-standing distaff for flax spinning.

#Flax #flaxtools #rosemaling

Close up view of the tines of a hackle, a tool for processing flax. Many of the tines have been damaged, with their tips bent into little barbs (the look a bit like Nessie). Hackles that have lost their covers are more likely to have this kind of damage. This one looks like it was dropped or crushed under something.

The same hackle, after rust reduction and resharpening. Another repaired hackle is visible behind it.

A hackle with many long tines, all looking pretty clean, sharp, and straight. A partially-assembled pine box, which will cover the tines when the tool is not in use, is visible behind the hackle.

The same hackle with the unfinished cover fitted over the tines.

Hackle rehab. I'm repairing tines on some of the hackles I picked up on the auction. The one in the first image was very bad, but cleaned up okay. Last two pictures show the best of the lot - I'm making a new cover for it, as the original was lost sometime over the past 200 years.

#flaxtools #flax