Travels in India (Tavernier) 87.1.4

87.1.4

This trick was at length so well understood by me that when I examined a parcel of stones which came from this mine, and saw that there were facettes on any of them, especially small facettes, I was certain that there was some speck or flaw in the stone. There are at this mine numerous diamond-cutters, and each has only a steel wheel of about the size of our plates. They place but one stone on each wheel, and pour water incessantly on the wheel until they have found the “grain” of the stone. The “grain” being found, they pour on oil and do not spare diamond dust, although it is expensive, in order to make the stone run faster, and they weight it much more heavily than we do. I have known them to weight a stone with 150 livres of lead. It is true that it was a large stone, which still weighed 103 carats after it had been cut, and that the mill was like ours, the large wheel of which was turned by four blacks. The Indians are not of the same opinion as we are, in that they do not believe that weighting them causes flaws in the stones. If theirs do not receive any it is because they always have a small boy who, holding in his hand a very thin wooden spoon, anoints the wheel incessantly with oil and diamond powder. Added to which their wheel does not go so fast as ours, because the wooden wheel which causes the steel one to revolve is seldom more than 3 feet in diameter.