02 · The Bench
Fifty-seven facets, by hand.
P-01 went from a 3.41 carat crystal to a 1.12 carat brilliant in forty-one hours of wheel time, over nine working days. One cutter did all of it.
“You do not cut a diamond. You find out which way it lets you.”Yael Oren, cutter, 31 years at this bench
- 01
Planning
The crystal is scanned and the finished stone is drawn inside it, several times, until the weight kept and the light returned stop arguing.
- 02
Cleaving
One tap along the plane the crystal already wants to split on. You arrived on this page that way.
- 03
Bruting
Two diamonds are ground against each other until the girdle is round. Nothing else is hard enough.
- 04
Polishing
Each facet is laid against a cast iron wheel charged with diamond dust, at the angle the drawing asks for.
03 · Bruting
Rub it round.
This is the girdle of P-01 seen from above, straight after cleaving. Rub back and forth across it, the way the second stone works against the first.
- Out of round
- 0.41 mm
- Strokes
- 0
Rub across the stone
04 · The scaife
Scroll turns the wheel.
Your hand holds the angle.
“When it is right, the wheel starts to sing. When it is wrong, it only makes noise.”
- Wheel
- 0 rpm
- Held at
- 0.0°
- The grain wants
- 40.8°
- Facets
- 0 / 57
Scroll to spin the wheel · move up and down to set the angle
Finished
Forty-one hours. Two thirds of the crystal on the floor. One stone that sends the light back.
“The dust is the expensive part. We sweep it into a jar and sell it back to the wheel.”
Set it in something