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Post by rockjunquie on Jul 16, 2013 17:22:06 GMT -5
This is a great thread. Thanks to sheltie for starting it! All points are good. The one thing I did not see anyone mention is waste. If someone did mention this, then I hope that party will forgive me. Let's say you have a rock that weighs five pounds. You cut it into slabs it weighs less. You have lost the heels from and back plus the blades kerf on every cut. For discussion sake you have cut the five pound stone into 20 slabs. Here is where it gets ugly. A high end cab professional like rockjunquie may only get one or two cabs per slab. Some of your slabs are small and only have one cab in there. Some are larger and you get four. Let's say you get an amazing 50 cabs from the source five pound stone. What does a cab weigh? If they weigh 5 grams you have a half pound of cabs from your five pound stone. Or, to put it another way, you lost 90% of the original stone. All that said, even at $30 a pound your stone cost for these theoretical cabs is $3ea. Not bad if you can get $35-$60ea. I think I can add more by asking a question. Tela, Krystee and the rest.... how much time is involved in making a cab? From slabbing to cab'ing to final product is there an hour in it? Is a cab an hour for a well outfitted & skilled pro reasonable? Thanks for the shout out! I am humbled and ill qualified, but I'll take it. LOL! I mentioned 10% for waste, but obviously it could be more. I see 10% mentioned a lot, though. I would go 2 or 3 times the gram cost per cab, plus 10% for waste. I only cut from slab right now. I can do an easy cab from slab to cab in about 1/2 hour including trimming time. But, I have spent much, much more time on some. Like was said, depends on the material and how cooperative it is. All this talk makes me want to do some timing and calculating to see just how much a cab should be at minimum via formula. For wrapping I calculated about 3 hours for a simple wrap. I'll find the link on my blog if anyone is interested. It includes all the angles for an easy, no frill wrap and takes into account finish work and selling time. 3 hours! The actual wrapping was only about an hour. All the incidentals add up. -- found it.... www.blog.telaformosa.com/2012/09/your-labor-day.html
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2013 17:39:50 GMT -5
Tela; I like to spread the love around!
I think you are being too conservative on waste.
Cut a preform, weight it, and then cut the cab. When finished, weigh it again. I'll bet you lose more than 10% just there. B ut what about the rest of the slab?
Exercise #2. Weight the slab, cut your cabs. Weigh the finished cabs. Divide the cab weight by the starting weight. That is the USABLE percentage of the slab. The rest was waste. I'll be surprised if you convert more than half the slab weight into cabs.
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bushkraft
having dreams about rocks
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Post by bushkraft on Jul 16, 2013 18:23:16 GMT -5
I sell about 40 cabs per week, mainly as freeform pendants using almost exclusively West Australian material, I charge a minimum of $20.00 per item but for choice material(Marra mamba,chrysoprase ect)around $50.00 is not unusual, it takes me about two hours to turn a lump of rock into a wearable piece of jewellery (Aussie spelling) by adding a drilled in eye bail. My advice would be to value add some of your cabs yourself rather than relying on selling to wire wrappers or metal smiths.
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sheldon74
having dreams about rocks
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Post by sheldon74 on Jul 16, 2013 18:29:23 GMT -5
Go to Sam Silverhawk's site and check out his cabs and prices. He only messes with great material, cuts mostly all designer cabs, and does great work. if you can compete with him designwise, qualitywise and pricewise, you should do well.....Mel www.samsilverhawk.com/526cabs/silver_in_cobaltite.html:)A 12 gram cabochon for $139.00? That's $11.50 per gram! If you want some of this material I have $680,000 worth of it out in my back yard. +Shipping. Pm me Seriously though I think the real value of this material is around $1.00 per gram due to the silver in it. The rest of the value would have to be the amount of time to make the cab and the fact the material is rare..
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Sabre52
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Me and my gal, Rosie
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Post by Sabre52 on Jul 16, 2013 18:39:50 GMT -5
yeah, I'm kind of with Scott on this one. Way more waste when you slab and cab. You do lose a lot from both ends of the rough. Plus, with thicker blades used for cutting lager rough, you may lose one slab worth of rock for every two slabs cut to the thickness of the blade kerf. That's why small thin blades are used for expensive material like opals. Also most slabs have waste due to defects.
Then we get to the major mistake a lot of folks make. Some folks try to get the most out of a slab by templating a ton of cabs from each slice. This often results in a bunch of cabs with so so patterns and colors and nothing real nice. For high quality cabs, one often has to choose the best area from an entire slab with most all the rest going to waste. This is especially true with picture jaspers and stuff like that. Only the most remarkable and consistent rough will really yield a bunch of nicely colored and patterned cabs from all parts of most all slabs,
In short, for me at least, there is a whole lot of waste, probably at least 40%, though a slab grabber may decrease this some by using more heel material....Mel
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Sabre52
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Post by Sabre52 on Jul 16, 2013 18:41:46 GMT -5
sheldon: Could be high but Silverhawk sells the heck out of his cabs *S*....Mel
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Post by vegasjames on Jul 16, 2013 19:23:50 GMT -5
Go to Sam Silverhawk's site and check out his cabs and prices. He only messes with great material, cuts mostly all designer cabs, and does great work. if you can compete with him designwise, qualitywise and pricewise, you should do well.....Mel www.samsilverhawk.com/526cabs/silver_in_cobaltite.html:)A 12 gram cabochon for $139.00? That's $11.50 per gram! If you want some of this material I have $680,000 worth of it out in my back yard. +Shipping. Pm me Seriously though I think the real value of this material is around $1.00 per gram due to the silver in it. The rest of the value would have to be the amount of time to make the cab and the fact the material is rare.. Part of it could be the cost of material. I read one site that says Tiffany stone sells for $275/lb wholesale when you can find it. And another site says the cabs sells for $20/g. It could also be reputation or branding. Just like a pair of Wrangler jeans is not going to cost anymore to produce than Jordace jeans, but look at the retail price difference.
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Post by tntmom on Jul 16, 2013 22:47:10 GMT -5
Here is one of my examples. This is a piece of Amethyst Sage. I paid $40 for the slab. I bought it from Aaron who works for West Coast Mining but I'm not sure if this was Dale's material, or Aaron's personal stash. Here is the slab: As you can see, only the bottom middle is high grade with killer plumes. I can still get two to three cabs out of that (or one super huge scene) plus a plethora of great cabs from the rest of the slab, just not $60+ ones for the others. That's ok though. I will still make way more than I spent and the hours working, plus enjoy the whole process doing it!!!!!
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Post by deb193redux on Jul 17, 2013 9:20:45 GMT -5
West Coast Gems often has nice stuff, but does aggressively price. I would have said that was a $30 slab.
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Post by tntmom on Jul 17, 2013 12:54:12 GMT -5
West Coast Gems often has nice stuff, but does aggressively price. I would have said that was a $30 slab. It was a little more than I usually spend. The birds flying over the trees at dusk pulled me in though!
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Post by rockpickerforever on Jul 17, 2013 13:09:16 GMT -5
Krystee, I'd like to see the cabs you get from this slab! This would have made a good virtual cab contest. Jean
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2013 13:45:50 GMT -5
Krystee please record the total weight of the slab. Then weigh the finished cabs.
Please and thank you.
That is a beautiful slab!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2013 13:50:01 GMT -5
For wrapping I calculated about 3 hours for a simple wrap. I'll find the link on my blog if anyone is interested. It includes all the angles for an easy, no frill wrap and takes into account finish work and selling time. 3 hours! The actual wrapping was only about an hour. All the incidentals add up. -- found it.... www.blog.telaformosa.com/2012/09/your-labor-day.htmlThat is a nice essay. Please allow me to be devil's advocate for a moment. Single cab wrap takes total of 3.5 hours. Perfect. From shopping to finished wrap. Of course. Now given the same set of circumstances but doing things is batch style. How long would it take to do five?
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Post by tntmom on Jul 17, 2013 18:35:50 GMT -5
Krystee please record the total weight of the slab. Then weigh the finished cabs. Please and thank you. That is a beautiful slab! I don't have plans on cutting it any time soon but... The slabs total weight is 292 grams. I am guessing only 1/4 or less of the slab will yield high end cabs. Ok, so initially the slab cost me 14 cents a gram. After cutting off the waste lets assume (hypothetically) I get 3 cabs at 12 grams each. The workable material cost would then become around 90 cents a gram or $10.80 each before labor supposing that the rest of the slab was not worth my time cabbing. Then I add my hourly rate cabbing it and mark up the finished product depending on polish, no scratches or pits, evenness of dome, girdle angle and height being spot on, etc.....
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Post by rockjunquie on Jul 17, 2013 19:41:24 GMT -5
For wrapping I calculated about 3 hours for a simple wrap. I'll find the link on my blog if anyone is interested. It includes all the angles for an easy, no frill wrap and takes into account finish work and selling time. 3 hours! The actual wrapping was only about an hour. All the incidentals add up. -- found it.... www.blog.telaformosa.com/2012/09/your-labor-day.htmlThat is a nice essay. Please allow me to be devil's advocate for a moment. Single cab wrap takes total of 3.5 hours. Perfect. From shopping to finished wrap. Of course. Now given the same set of circumstances but doing things is batch style. How long would it take to do five? Interesting question which I don't have an answer for. I don't work like that and never have. I'm not even sure how I would batch wrap. I can see doing batch cabs, though, especially given that one could work batches for each successive wheels.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2013 21:30:43 GMT -5
Krystee please record the total weight of the slab. Then weigh the finished cabs. Please and thank you. That is a beautiful slab! I don't have plans on cutting it any time soon but... The slabs total weight is 292 grams. I am guessing only 1/4 or less of the slab will yield high end cabs. Ok, so initially the slab cost me 14 cents a gram. After cutting off the waste lets assume (hypothetically) I get 3 cabs at 12 grams each. The workable material cost would then become around 90 cents a gram or $10.80 each before labor supposing that the rest of the slab was not worth my time cabbing. Then I add my hourly rate cabbing it and mark up the finished product depending on polish, no scratches or pits, evenness of dome, girdle angle and height being spot on, etc..... 292 grams and the plan is to make 36 grams of cabs = 87% waste. I knew it! Krystee, could you get 5 more lower grade 12 gram cabs from that same slab?
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