Nephrite Jade is an extremely tough material to work. Nephrite Jade is fibrous in structure, similar to a handful of human hair. Due to this fibrous structure it cannot be cut with chisels, it has to be ground using very hard sharp abrasives, Diamonds. All of the saw blades we use have diamond imbedded in a soft matrix. This allows the soft matrix to slowly wear away exposing new diamond. It is the hardness of the Diamond particles being dragged over the softer Jade, that does the cutting.