An old engraving of a man cutting diamonds. It is from a Victorian mechanical engineering book of the 1880s. In the illustration a belt-driven wheel powers the rotating machinery. The man holds an arm or handle holding the gem diamond. This is fed against a ‘dop’ – the cutting stone on the fast-rotating wheel. Diamond cutting is shaping a diamond from a rough stone into a faceted gem. The cutting method was to use a lower grade stone to scratch (brute) the gem diamond stroke by stroke manually removing diamond dust and small fragments until the shape was formed.
An old engraving of a man cutting diamonds. It is from a Victorian mechanical engineering book of the 1880s. In the illustration a belt-driven wheel powers the rotating machinery. The man holds an arm or handle that holds the gem diamond. This is fed against a ‘dop’ contains the cutting stone on the fast-rotating wheel. Diamond cutting is the practice of shaping a diamond from a rough stone into a faceted gem. Cutting an extremely hard diamond requires specialised skills and equipment. In as far back as 300 BC workers in India engraved diamond, by a scratching process – they discovered that the only material that could scratch a diamond was another diamond. ‘Bruting’ began around the late fourteenth century. This method was to use a lower grade stone to scratch (brute) the gem diamond stroke by stroke manually removing diamond dust and small fragments until the crude shape was accomplished. The most significant development during the 1800s was that of the steam-driven bruting machine by Charles M Field and Henry D Morse. It was patented in 1874 – with these machines came the first-round brilliant-cut diamonds.
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