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Bruting in History
This modern scratch stick is similar to what was used before machines were implemented. An industrial-quality diamond is mounted in the end of the stick, and the stick is held by hand against the gem diamond, forcibly contacting the stone to slowly brute (scratch) the material away.
In as far back as 300 BC, East Indians engraved diamond, by a process much like bruting. They discovered that the only substance that could scratch diamond was diamond itself. Their scratchings turned into designs on the surfaces of rough diamond. In the fashion that we use bruting today, that began around the late fourteenth century. This crude method was simple in concept, but very taxing physically. The gem diamond and a lower grade stone (probably industrial) were both mounted solidly in scratch sticks. The lower- quality diamond was then used to scratch (brute) the gem diamond stroke by stroke manually, to arduously remove diamond dust and small fragments until the crude shape was accomplished. Not until the end of the nineteenth century was a power driven girdling machine invented and put into production use.
