Published in 1902, the article goes into the trade of diamond cutting. Apparently, diamond cutting was a great paying field to apprentice in over 100 years ago because the cutters could make a good amount of money each week – far more than the $6 a week made by women who worked in factories or department stores.
Peculiar Art of Cutting and Polishing Diamonds
New York now leads the world in the art of cutting and polishing diamonds. In the twenty diamond cutting concerns in this city 20,000 karats of rough diamonds are polished each year, rather more than the annual output of the Brazilian mines. About 200 skilled workmen are employed in the trade, and the bosses say that the diamond cutters of New York now excel those of London or Amsterdam. The business has practically grown up within the last twenty years, and nearly all the apprentices are now native born. A clever lad beginning the trade at 15 may become a skilled workman in five or six years. The best diamond cutters under favorable conditions earn from $40 to $90 a week. These are better wages than those earned by even the most famous foreign diamond cutters. Workmen here are more intelligent and trustworthy than those of Holland, France, or England, the chief diamond cutting countries of Europe. Theft is common abroad, but is unusual here.
Proverbial American extravagance is the secret of New York’s lead in diamond cutting. Foreign diamond cutters are not permitted to lose more than 50 percent on each stone. Here the loss is seldom less than 60 percent, and often greater. The diamond is almost indestructible. It loses nothing by long wearing and acids cannot injure it. The prevalent idea that soap and water dim the luster of the diamond is a mistake. This is the dull season, and the diamond dealers of London are holding back rough diamonds with the hope of an improvement in prices. Ordinarily, however, rough diamonds may be bought in this market at about $20 per karat for small stones, say up to three karats. Above that the price rises by great leaps. The methods of getting at the price is to multiply the rate per karat by the square of the number of karats. A ten-karat diamond often brings $2000. A diamond weighing three karats in the rough, and worth here $60, will, when polished, weigh something over one karat and sell, unset, at a jeweler’s at from $90 to $100. It is difficult, however, to speak with certainty of these things, because the diamond trade is full of tricks. No one knows how often duties are evaded; no one can guess what commissions brokers receive. Diamond cutters seldom deal directly with the jewelers. A skilled broker acts as a go-between. He goes about town with perhaps $100,000 worth of diamonds in his pocket. On credit sales his commission is 1 percent, but on cash sales it may be almost anything.
In looking about a diamond cutting establishment one would hardly suspect the precious character of the material in use. The floors are bare, the windows are open and anyone may enter by the door unchallenged.
When a diamond cutter receives an invoice of stones he carefully studies each one and takes note of its color, size, weight and shape. The whiter ones look like bits of clear alum, the darker like clouded quartz. The rarest and costliest stones are of sky blue, pink and black. When the boss cutter has made accurate record of his rough diamonds he divides them into groups of four and five and gives a group to each workman. From that time forth the man to whom they are entrusted is responsible for the stones. He returns them each night to the boss and the progress of the work is carefully noted. In this way it is made extremely difficult for fraud to be practiced. A cutter is seldom permitted to polish a stone belonging to any one but the boss. Doubtless the workman would be careful to prevent confusion, but mistakes might arise. Now and then a clever substitution is managed, and once in a while outright theft is committed.
The first work done upon the rough diamond is cleaving. The stone is placed in a peculiar cement that softens easily and hardens quickly. A little notch on the line of cleavage is made with another diamond, the edge of an old razor is placed in this notch, and with a smart blow of the hammer the diamond is split. Of course when a diamond can be worked while it is not split. After cleaving comes cutting. The diamond is placed in a little mass of cement on the end of a stick and scraped with another diamond similarly embedded. The cutter has six points presented to him, and he begins with the one that seems most promising. His choice decides which shall be the upper surface of the diamond, for in the “brilliant” cutting, which is the most difficult and the one most generally practiced here, the exposed surface is slightly flattened, while the under side runs to the apex of a pyramid. In this way eight or ten facets are made. From the cutter the stone goes to the grinder, or polisher, who patiently turns it and turns it until the swiftly whirling wheel has cut upon the surface fifty-eight tiny facets. These fifty-eight facets appear upon every diamond cut as a brilliant, whether it be a ten-karat stone as broad as a man’s thumb nail or a tiny spark not bigger than two pin heads. The wheel on which the stones are polished is a soft iron disk, lined with innumerable curved rays running from center to circumference. This is sprinkled with diamond dust and sweet oil. The moment a scratch appears on the wheel the diamond must be removed to some other part of the surface.
The finished stone comes from the wheel covered with oil, but a ten minutes’ bath in sulphuric acid leaves the surface clear and brilliant.
There is absolutely no waste. Boort, which is the name given to diamond chipping that cannot be polished, is placed in a steel mortar, exactly like an old fashioned churn, and brayed into powder for the polisher. Not a single karat is lost, for the mortar is dust proof and the pestle fits so close that the particles cannot rise from the bottom.
Source: The San Francisco Call. Newspaper. January 26, 1902.
