Beetling. In some rural districts of Scotland the peasantry, when they have not ready access to a mangle, beat clothes, newly washed and dried, with a wooden mallet on a flat stone, and the operation is called beetling. The same term is applied to a finishing process in the manufacture of linen, and also of some kinds of cotton goods. Just as in the hammering by hand, the object is to fill up and give a finish to the cloth by flattening its surface. It is done by the rising and falling of upright wooden stamps, placed close together in a row, with their square butts resting on a roller over which the cloth passes under them. The stamps are worked by the rotation of a horizontal shaft, acting with tapets, like the cylinder of a barrel-organ.
Linen weft yarns, and especially such as are used for heavy sail-cloth, are also beëted by this machine to soften them. But finer weft yarns of this material are now, instead of being beëted, passed through what is called a softening machine, which consists of two pairs of grooved wooden rollers with the requisite driving gear.