Fiber dimensions greatly affect spinning; however, they are highly variable and dependent upon many effects, such as species, maturity, growing location, retting or extraction processes. A principal reason that short-staple flax proves
difficult to spin into yarn using traditional cotton processing methods is that flax fibers exhibit weak inter-fiber cohesive forces [5]. Ultimate flax fibers typically range in size from 5 to 76 μm in diameter, a width distribution that is considerably more variable than that in cotton, which ranges from 12 to 25 μm in diameter [6]. The width variabiliy of flax may contribute to the observed lack of cohesion along with the fact that the fiber itself has a smooth, tubular morphology as opposed to cotton, which has periodic convolutions enabling neighboring fibers to interlock with one another. Flax fibers are considered strong and straight fibers without convolutions or crimp.