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I do admit that the natural air convection in the much larger vault does help delay the temperature rise within the chamber but I did say it is an apples to oranges comparison. The interior of the vault can hold everything used in its construction 4 times over but the safe can't even hold a quarter of it's own constructing material so for efficient fire protection of a large collection, the ceramic fiber lined vault is far better than the safe.

You almost half way admitted it there in your answer.

The vault is better than the safe. It's better than the safe because it uses one of the best insulations available. Air. Smaller safes have to use better man made insulations, because they do not have the air volume inside.

Using the same ceramic insulation, exclusively, in a smaller safe would yield faster and higher temperature rises than the exact same test performed on the large vault. This is exactly the same when other insulations are used, and is why many of those insulations are moisture bearing. Behind air, steam is also a great natural insulator.

In a nutshell, this is why the ceramics will not pass the UL test, and is why many other dry insulations will not pass it either.

It's also expensive as compared to drywall or concrete. The cost of the insulation alone for what Sturdy puts on it's gun safe is almost 200 dollars. Add to that the 14ga liner that needs to be fabricated and then the labor required for installation all of which doesn't leave you much room to make any money on the option. Compare that to fire rated 5/8" drywall that can be bought at retail for less than 9 dollars a sheet or concrete that is about $100 per yard right now (no where near that needed in an average safe).

So the ceramics cost $200, but what tooling does it take, and how much labor is required to install it?

The cements are goin to vary in price depending on how complex they are, but you are right in that they are not expensive (when talking about the fire rated versions).

But lets look at their construction. Sturdy builds a safe, puts in ceramic, and rivets in a liner. In a safe using cement, the body must be built in a hollow form. This form must prevent the wet cement from leaking out. This is a bit more complex than the Sturdy.

The cement must be mixed (cement plant on site), moved from the plant to the safe (pumps), placed into the safe properly (vibrating tables), then cured (large ovens). All of this equipment is expensive, requires maintenance, uses expensive power, requires labor to use each piece, and takes time.

Even Amsec admitted when asked by someone who called from an earlier discussion that they don't use the same insulating material on their fire safes as they do for their other safes. Their fire safes use a vermiculite concrete mix whereas their other security or burglary and fire safes use a denser mix which is great for security but bad for preventing heat transfer.

Every type of safe is going to have a different mixture, and each manufacture's mixture will be different than the others when looking at the same type of safe. Different jobs equal different tools.

Dense insulating materials aren't always bad for preventing heat transfer. Even heavy plate steel safes, with no insulation at all, have survived fires.