This apparatus is designed for the determination of hardness resistance of exterior organic coatings of cookware. It is applicable for ambient temperature test and elevated temperature test. Applying loads of 8N or 4N to the apparatus, then drawing the pencil across 25 mm of an untouched area of the test surface (the surface's temperature is 200C under elevated temp test) at an angle of 45°to it. When pencil fails to cut a clean path through to the substrate, customer finished this test, and record the hardness value.