I recently had occasion – well, ok, need – to buy a heat gun. So I searched on Amazon, as one does, and found that the SeekOne heat gun had great reviews, and was reasonably priced (under $30) and was likely to be perfect for my needs (softening vinyl floor planks to re-glue them). And the wide range of temperatures spanning nearly 1000 degrees sounded awesome. “From a gentle 122° for delicate tasks to an intense 1202° for heavy-duty applications. This wide temperature spectrum allows for unparalleled flexibility,” says the Amazon listing.
(This is for the SeekOne SDL-2816 heat gun, not the SDL-2816LCD heat gun, which is important, as you will see. Also, while the heat gun listings are all for the “SeekOne” heat gun, and in fact the company name is SeekOne, inexplicably their website domain is “iseekone.com”; not sure why the addition of the “i” in front of “seekone”, especially as there is nobody squatting on “seekone.com”, but there you have it.)
Rufus, Amazon’s annoying AI mascot, will tell you that “1800W of heat power provides a powerful boost to ensure smooth use for heavy-duty work, and also delivers heat quickly in 1.5 seconds, and that “the temperature settings are adjustable for different applications. The heat gun provides variable temperature control ranging from 122° to 1202° through a dial and high/low air flow switch. Customers find it versatile with adjustable heat and airflow settings suitable for various projects.”
Great! I was sold!
What none of this tells you, and what you will likely only discover once you have the heat gun in your hot little hands, is that the heat setting dial IS NOT CALIBRATED!!! That’s right, there are NO TEMPERATURE SETTINGS, it’s all just guess work on a “variable temperature” dial.
Now, if you pay close attention, and particularly if you are looking for it, you might notice that. But really, you probably wouldn’t. You would see that the dial (which is basically the back of the heat gun) has tick marks much like a ruler. And like a ruler, there are longer tick marks at intervals between which are smaller tick marks. So where a ruler’s longer tick marks indicate inches, and the shorter tick marks in between represent, for example, tenths of an inch, you might reasonably expect that the longer tick marks on the heat gun’s dials represent N 100s of degrees, with the shorter tick marks representing some fraction thereof.
Based on this, what I thought quite reasonable, assumption, I wrote to SeekOne asking them if they could explain to me which temperatures were associated with which tick marks. I needed to know this because all of the directions I found for warming up vinyl flooring tiles said to not use heat above 140°. In fact, this is what I sent to the company:
“I just purchased your heat gun and was surprised to find that the heat settings dial does not show actual temperatures. For example, I need to very specifically set it to 140° but there is no way to determine where on the dial that is. Do you have a chart that shows (at least approximately) to what temperature each point on the dial corresponds?”
They responded “This heat gun comes with adjustable temperature settings, covering a range from 122°F to 1202°F. It features six approximate temperature ranges, though it doesn’t have a specific temperature display. In contrast, the 2816LCD model has a specific temperature display, allowing you to precisely monitor and set the temperature. If you have any questions afterward, please feel free to contact us!”
Well, that was not terribly helpful. So now I not only was determined to get them to narrow this down for me, but I planned to write about it – this very post that you are reading – so that nobody else went through this frustration.
So I pressed them, and eventually determined that these below are the correct temperature ranges for the SeekOne SDL-2816 heat gun. So here you go.
Temperature Range Settings for the SeekOne Heat Gun SDL-2816
Here is the dial on the SeekOne heat gun. As you can see, the heat gradient is separated into six zones. Here are the corresponding temperatures for each zone (all given in Fahrenheit).
Zone 1 goes from 122° to 302°
Zone 2 goes from 302° to 482°
Zone 3 goes from 482° to 662°
Zone 4 goes from 662° to 842°
Zone 5 goes from 842° to 1022°
Zone 6 goes from 1022° to 1202°
Once you know this, this is a great little heat gun, at a great price (under $30). Here is the link to it on Amazon (NOT an affiliate link): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078S5QMFG/
