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New York Cutting Center The World’s Finest

Diamonds go through different processes from mining which produces the stone’s rough form to cutting and polishing in factories to reveal their genuine beauty and brilliance. There are a limited number of cutting centers around the world as the cutting and polishing of this rare stone requires special skills.

Man-made Diamonds Challenge Natural Diamonds

It used to be that people know only of natural diamonds that are colorless. These white precious stones are the original diamonds that jewelry lovers adore and long to own for personal use or investment purposes. However through the years and with the advancement of technology, inventive scientists and jewelers have come up with man-made diamonds that upon first glance, look very much the same as the real stone. ... Read More

The primary processing centers in the world where loose diamonds are evaluated, cut and sold are in Antwerp, India, Tel Aviv and New York. In the United States, New York is the diamond cutting center handling bigger and more valuable diamonds in smaller quantities.

Early beginnings

Reports have it that there existed only a small cutting industry in the U.S. for about 65 to 70 years. More than 600 cutters were doing business then. However, when the great depression occurred in the late 1920s, many American diamond cutters ventured into other lines of business and never looked back.

New York earned the title as diamond cutting center by default in the 1940s. By the end of 1941, there were between 400 and 550 cutters in about 30 or more shops.

In the same year, cutting centers in other countries also ped. South Africa had only less than 300, according to Sydney H. Ball, a diamond statistician and diamond mining engineer. England and the whole of Great Britain had less than 200, Tel Aviv in Israel had 200 refugee Belgian and Dutch cutters, Puerto Rico had 75, Brazil had 200 and India as well as Borneo also had 200.

The war actually benefitted the U.S. as the country became the only important nation that bought diamonds in the post-war era. India, on the other hand, refused to buy the precious stone while England despite having the urge to buy diamonds as a hedge against inflation and the threat of invasion was discouraged to splurge for patriotic reasons. Another benefit cited was that the U.S. notably the New York area provided a safe refuge to Jews who fled the diamond centers in Antwerp and Amsterdam. These Jews brought with them their business spirit and skills in cutting and polishing resulting in a flourishing diamond industry in America.

The need for cutting

The diamond, after being mined, does not appear to be a very attractive stone. Still in its rough form, it looks dull and is just a translucent crystal similar to just a chip of a broken glass. To make it into a gemstone with beautiful luster and prepare it for sale, it needs to be cut in a certain shape and then polished.

The cutting process that a rough diamond undergoes involves several steps that include sawing, cleaning, grinding, polishing and faceting. Back in the olden days, diamond cutting was a primitive process. There were no machines then that could cut and polish diamonds easily. Everything had to be done by hand and only a few craftsmen mostly those in Antwerp and Amsterdam had the special skills to cut diamonds into attractive gems. The diamond had to be cleaved using a chisel and then polished in a tin cup shaped like an egg. In short, the process was slow.

By the end of the 15th century, however, the process was improved after a Jewish diamond cutter, Lodewyk van Berken based in Antwerp created the scaif or a polishing wheel that made use of a mixture of olive oil and diamond dust.

The diamond saw, a round-shaped steel blade, came next before the mathematical formula in cutting diamond was discovered by then 21-year-old Marcel Tolkowsky in 1919.

Diamond cutting

Cutting diamonds requires great skill practiced for many years. The final polished diamond is usually determined by the stone’s natural form. Rough diamonds that possess that gem quality are distributed to the main diamond cutting and trading centers in New York, Antwerp, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, China, Thailand and Johannesburg after sorting. Upon reaching the diamond centers, experts called “diamantaires” start cutting and polishing the rough diamonds into different shapes such as the ever popular round brilliant, oval, heart, pear and emerald.

The cutting process comes before the polishing. After polishing, the diamonds are reclassified according to their cut, color, clarity and carat weight or the so-called four C’s. The polished ones are then sold to diamond wholesalers or jewelry manufacturers in one of the 24 registered diamond exchanges around the globe.

Diamonds used for industrial applications are mostly preferred for their hardness and heat conductivity. In this case, the gemological characteristics of diamonds are rendered useless. Normally, about 80 percent or 100 million carats of mined diamonds not suited to be used as gemstones (often referred to as borts) are automatically sorted for industrial use. They are used in cutting, drilling, grinding and polishing.

Most diamonds used for industrial purposes are actually small in size. They are either grounded into powder form for use in grinding and polishing applications or embedded in tips of drills or saw blades.

Cutting centers

Diamond cutting centers can be found usually near the trading centers. New York is just one example apart from Tel Aviv in Israel and Gujarat in India. In the Diamond District of New York situated on 47th Street between the Fifth and Sixth Avenues is where diamonds imported in the U.S. are brokered, exchanged, cut into lovely jewelry and sold to customers.

New York’s 47th Street continues to accommodate the cutting and polishing of large and rare diamonds that are from three to five carats. The number of diamond cutters had ped from around 3,000 15 years ago to only about 300, according to the publisher of the Rapaport Diamond Report, Martin Rapaport. He attributed the reason for the decline to the low cost of diamond cutting labor in Asian countries notably in India where a one-carat diamond can be cut for as low as $10 compared to the $110 cost in New York or even the $65 charge in Tel Aviv, Israel.

The district features 25 exchanges and 2,600 independent jewelers. Majority or 95 percent of the owners of shops and stalls that abound in this narrow street are Jewish, notably Orthodox and Hasidic Jews.