Good luck with it Dust!

Don't forget to get the IR thermometer as close as you can when you take your readings, as with most of the garden variety units the measured spot size increases dramatically with distance......

Without getting too technical, you're correct that IR surface reflectivity is an issue to be aware of - simply put it is the percentage of the surface that reflects IR energy vs the percentage that emits it - E+R=1.0. With IR, a surface that is 50% emissive is also 50% reflective - which means that only half of the IR energy the detector sees is from the surface temperature and the other half is reflected from the background. FYI, the emissivity of unoxidized or polished steel ranges from 0.1 to 0.3 (10% to 30%).

Didn't mean to get going......I'm a recently retired reliability engineer and vibration analysis, IR thermography, ultrasound and strain analysis are tools of the trade......old habits die hard.

Tim