Tempil 28049 Surface Temperature Indicator, One Indicator, 700 Degree F

It was exactly what I needed, but took a while to get it.

I bought a couple of these, and they are completely useless. The idea is to wipe them onto something you're going to heat, then you can see when it melts. Well, there's no "wiping" to it. These things are hard as a rock and no matter how hard you rub them onto the object you're heating, none of it, other than perhaps some dust, comes off onto the object to be heated. I should have stuck to the paint-on liquid type. Either this design is terrible or the ones I got were all dried out. Also, the collet for holding the stick was frozen onto the metal tube that holds the stick, and was quite difficult to remove. Once I finally got it off, I could then see that the stick inside was also broken into several pieces. Useless junk, and it's going back.

It's so bad I'm not sure why this product is being sold. The marker is stuck inside the metal casing. The collet on the end that you need to loosen to extract the marker is jammed and won't turn. I destroyed the casing to get the marker out only to find out that it doesn't even mark aluminum. It's totally useless. I'm guessing they had a useable product at some point because they wouldn't have gotten very far with garbage like this.

Absolute junk. It just crumbles without marking. If this product works don't purchase it here.

I purchased the tempilstick to anneal brass for reloading , after reading how much more convenient the tempilstick was over the actual Tempilaq liquid I decided to give it a try as it didn't require a separate purchase of a solvent / thinner to clean up residual material. Upon arrival I put it straight to use and got my annealing rig all set up , and ready to run a batch of rifle cases using the tempilstick. I would not recommend this to someone looking to use in similar manner , the tempilstick requires the surface to be heated first then swiped with the chalk pen , if you have reached the desired temperature that correspond with your pen rating , then your swipe across the heated surface should turn to liquid indicating you've reached the target temperature. I ran a few controlled samples on scrap brass that didn't make if I over cooked it or not and shy of getting the surface glowing red ( temp measures around 1000*F on brass ) the chalk wouldn't repeatably melt or indicate the 700* temperature with any sort of accuracy. I've since messed around with temperatures and preparation of surface and I would recommend to others who are intending to use for same projects to bypass the tempilstick pens and spend the extra money for the Tempilaq. The pen does not work as definitively as the liquid does nor is it as easy to work with. If you watch the tempilstick product video you can clearly see at the indicated temperature of pen that when then substrate has reached the target temperature it looks more like a paint pen when swiped across surface , no matter how hot I got my brass I never achieved that end result , even at 1000 degrees using a 700* marker