Back when I was cutting professionally, my best time on a 1 ct Montana Sapphire SRB, from rough to completely cut & polished gem (in front of the student who’d challenged me and was holding the stopwatch) was 56 minutes, on an Ultra Tec V2. (Mind you, that was 24 years ago…)
I'm a commercial cutter of 35 years or so. Depends a lot on the material. The other day 1.5 ct aus. Sapp R/brill was about an hour but a similar size zambian emerald was 45 min. The Burmese boys I used to work with could cut a 1 ct sapp crown in 12 minutes. The best I could ever do of good make was a complete crown in 17. Some of the young Thais girls with jam peg are mind blowingly fast.
And amazing pre-form, I remember Expo 86 in Vancouver B.C. and they had big stone wheel's back then possibly hand or foot spun??? Been a long time...anyways impressive work! So fast!
If I really want the stone done I'll run my machine at almost full speed but it would take about 2-3 days. I like to take my time, in Jan I finished a 55ct quartz modified Portuguese with 209 facets 25mm, it took a month. lol
that's a cool style machine....I wish I had payed closer attention to the CutKit1 video, as I thought it all came with the Vevor machine but they are 2 separate entities and keep selling out as soon as they get the kit's in....oops should have listened closer.....what is this style machine or make and model???
Credit where credit is due, he's good at SRBs, but I wonder how he would go on a rectangular cushion. Every cut I do is done to maximise yield so virtually never do an SRB. All take a lot more time, but then custom cuts make more money for unique pieces of jewellery.
Whenever we used to work together, he would bring in five pieces of Rough to show the students one day, tourmaline, spinel, sapphire, etc. The next day after an eight hour day of teaching, he would go home cut 5 10-carat stones overnight, sleep, and then come back and show us the next day. Dude is fast, great yield, nice polish and his meetpoints are impressive.
Spends on your goals. If you’re trying to make a living, cutting multiple stones a days is the difference between paying the bills and putting away some savings.