Colwood Super Pro II Review

Colwood Super Pro II Review

This Colwood Super Pro II Review is a long time coming. The Colwood Burner has been with me in my pyrography journey from the beginning. I’m going to show you what it can do and how it can help you level up your wood burning skills. In this video, I cover heat retention, tip selection, ease of switching tips, quickness of heating and cooling, costs and overall pros and cons. 

Watch the Video

Colwood Super Pro II Kit

Criteria for review:

1. General Features
2. Heat Retention
3. Tip Selection
4. Ease of Switching tips
5. Quickness of heating and cooling
6. Cost
7. Stand Out Perks

Before we get started with the Colwood Super Pro II Review, I want to make sure this is clear. I’m not being paid to say any of these things. These are 100% my thoughts and opinions. The main thing our followers ask is “what equipment should I use?” For years, I stuck with one burner, so for the sake of giving my audience the best possible info, I decided to branch out and test other options.

I reached out to several wood burning manufacturers and asked if we could test there burner and review it. I was honest with them and told them that I would give a 100% honest review. It’s important that my audience have the best knowledge possible and I want them to know what to expect. Most of the manufacturers responded excitedly and gladly sent me a burner to test and review. Colwood is one of those, so let’s dive into the criteria. 

Review Criteria

First, I want to explain the criteria in which I’ll be reviewing this tool and others similar to it. I’m going to be doing a series of reviews and I want to keep the criteria similar so they are comparable. General Features (which won’t be judged, just explained) Heat Retention, Tip Selection, Ease of switching tips, quickness of heating and cooling, cost, and stand out perks that this tool has. 

The stand out perks category is a chance for me to explain a feature or two a tool has that the others don’t. It’s my experience that each one of these tools and companies offer something the others don’t and they need to be mentioned. All of these tools perform similarly and very well, so in most cases of deciding which one to purchase it comes down to personal preference and expectations and these stand out perks have a lot to do with those personal choices. 

General Features

Colwood Super Pro II review of the general features. First, the super pro has a two wire hookup for two pens. They are different. The left side is the detail side, and the cord is thinner. It’s made for lower heats. The right side is the heavy duty side and has a thicker cord. It’s made for higher heats.

The center black button on the front of the machine toggles between the detail and heavy duty options. The detail side offers lower temp settings, while the heavy duty side gets very hot. This feature is great for loading two pens and being set up to burn both low and high temps. If you are shading a project that has both light and dark areas, you can have two pens loaded ready to go without changing tips in between heat settings. 

The heat setting dial ranges from 1 – 10. I have found that burning at an 8 on the heavy duty side is the maximum amount of heat I need and I don’t really need to go that high very often. I normally shade around a 3 heat setting and I burn deep textures around the 6 heat setting.

The on/off switch is the red button which is also located on the front. And that’s pretty much it for the unit. It’s a very simple easy to machine. You plug in your wand, set the heat and turn it on. Very simple. 

Fixed or Replaceable tips?

One is not better than the other. It comes down to the preference. I like the replaceable because they are less expensive and take up less space. The fixed tips are great because they are easier to change. You don’t need the tip puller with the fixed tips, however they cost more. 

Heat Retention

The heat retention on this machine is really solid. Every burner loses a little bit of heat when the tip touches the wood. The transfer from tip to wood is what causes the wood to burn, so it makes sense for the tip temperature to drop. What you want to look for here is how much heat is retained in the tip so that you can keep burning consistently. 

The Colwood Super Pro II does an excellent job at retaining the heat. And the machine gets hot enough that you can turn it up to accommodate for any heat loss, especially if you’re working on harder woods.  

Tip Selection

Colwood has a great selection of tips. They have over 40 tips to choose from. Although I typically only use about four of them for my art work, there is such a large selection. Here’s the website if you want to check out the selection. Woodburning.com.  

Ease of Switching Tips

The Colwood tip switch is one of the easiest on the market. If you choose the replaceable tips, you can use the tip puller to pull out the current tip and then just place the tip of your choice into the wand.

If you go with the fixed wands, you simply pull the wand from the cord at the base, then attach the new fixed wand. It’s as simple as that.

Quickness of Heating and Cooling

This is a really important feature to me. I’m impatient when it comes to the heat. I want it to get hot quickly and the Colwood Super Pro II doesn’t disappoint. It only takes seconds for the tip to reach the heat setting you entered in. And when I say seconds, I mean like 4 – 5 seconds and the tip is ready to go. 

It takes a little bit longer to cool, but not by much. I counted around 20 seconds from the time I turned off the heat and the tip was no longer making burn marks on the wood. And because the tip switch is so easy, you don’t have to wait to put on another wand. 

Cost

The Colwood Super Pro II is one of the pricier units on the market. And once you start adding tips and accessories, it will add up quick. You can get a kit on amazon that has the Super Pro II, three tips, tip puller, and a pyro book and it costs $195.00 as of today. 

Or you can go to the Colwood website woodburning.com and they have a different kit that has more accessories and it costs $227.00 as of today. 

Or you can go to the Colwood website and build your own kit. You can choose the Super Pro II model, then add the tips and accessories you want instead of only getting what’s in the kit.

Pros 

• Easy to use; very simple set up
• very hot; great heat retention
• pen-like wand
• large variety of tips
• established brand in the USA

Cons:

• Need Finger guards; it gets too hot to hold
• higher costs than other brands and Colwood models

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• Burnmaster Eagle Pro – BLOG
• Razertip P80 – BLOG
• TRUArt Brass Tip Kit – Video
• Optima Dual Port – Video

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