Anyone used tempilaq?

CWendling

CWendling

Joined
Sep 10, 2005
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Got some just to check my kiln thermocouple, but the directions are pretty vague and cant seem to find much on the web. Tossed a few coupons in at various temps (marked). Its 1500 temp (blue, but dries to almost white). Says the temp is reached when melted. Not sure exactly what they mean by melted. The white color on the 1350 piece was the color before it went in. The other three look about the same to me.
 

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These sticks are designed to be drawn across the hot surface not put on steel and baked in the oven. And even if thy do last through the warming up cycle thy do have a wide tolerance and some of them are affected by age and moisture. I bought a bunch awhile ago from amazon and thy where all like 8-10 years old. I called the company that made them and thy told me thy had a shelf life of 1 year. I think mine had a tolerance of something like +-25°. So better then nothing but I would trust a pid and thermal couple above and beyond one of those sticks. I could see bringing one rated for 1500° with you if you went on @forged in fire” as that would be handy. But not really worth much of anything with an oven. But that’s just my 2 cents - JT
 
JT you are thinking of the Tempilstik. The tempilaq is a liquid that is meant to be painted on the materiel
 
Totally what JT said

I bought some from a local dealer, had to buy $100 worth to do the order.

Kept in a toolbox drawer in an unheated shop, they crumbled into dust.
The dust ate through the new drawer - power coat paint and rusted all the precision tools in the same drawer

You can feel the difference as you hit temp, it glides on as it melts.
But as he said, it's heat and try, heat and try
 
I'll chime in here since I was someone who used to recommend Tempil-stix. hey work fine for what they are designed to do .. tell you when a piece of metal is at a certain heat. This works best for a welder checking when he has heated up a big piece of steel ( an anvil?) to do a weld on it, or for the cool down annealing after the weld. You just rub the stick across the metal and if it is hot enough the stick feels like a crayon and melts making a smooth mark. If the metal isn't hot enough, it feels like the stick is a piece of chalk.

I have two bottles of templaq that are for 1450F and 1500F. Here is how to use it.:
Prepare the blade for quenching and when all steps are done, sand the surfaces clean. Apply a bead of Tempilaq. It goes on like thick rough paint. Put in the forge and when the blade reaches 1450 ( for my example) the paint will slum down and become glassy and smooth. Heat the blade just a little longer if your target is 1475F, pull the blade, and quench. I would have to look ands see where the bottles are right now, because I have learned to use a magnet and my eye to get good forge HT and the oven takes care of the temperature for me.
It would be a good way to check you oven accuracy.

In using the tempil-stix to check the oven I used to rub them so I make a sort of crumbly/gritty raised mark with a little thickness to it. That would slump down and get shiny at the rated temperature. It would like the Tempilaq, but was harder to apply. I never thought about it, but I suspect a small broken off piece of the Tempil-stix would work as a temperature indicator.
 
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