Labels on the fuse box and towpath rocks with the Posca paint markers

Two weeks of the Posca PC-5M paint marker set, the 8 count medium tip one, split between labelling things on the boat and a pile of rocks for the towpath that a neighbour's kid roped me into.

Price wise it lands well over the Artistro and no-name acrylic paint pens, a touch over a Sharpie oil based set, and under Molotow One4All by a decent gap, so it's the brand name of the category and priced like it. I go into pens the way I go into the smart meters at the units, wanting the real reading and not the marketing one.

Shake it, pump it, wait. The first minute with any Posca is priming the tip against scrap card until the paint arrives, and the first time you do it on the actual project the tip floods and dumps a blob. Mine did on a black rock. Learn it on card.

The medium tip is reversible, 1.8 mm on the bullet end and 2.5 mm if you pull it out and flip it, and that's legit two pens in one for the money. The 1.8 does lettering on jar lids and the labels on the 12 V fuse box readable from across the cabin, the 2.5 fills a rock in a few strokes.

Water based acrylic, so the smell in a closed cabin is nothing, which after alcohol markers in a space this size is worth a lot.

Over black rock, white in one coat. Yellow over dark wood took two, and the colours dry matte and flat with no streaking as long as the tip is fed. On glass it dries to a hard skin in about ten minutes and then it's fingernail proof but not knife proof, so the meter readings I wrote on the glass of the panel meter wipe off with a scrub, wich is what I wanted, a permanent acrylic marker would need a sealer or a bake.

Eight colours is a starter set, the basics and not much nuance, so the rock painter next door ran out of options in an evening. The 8 count covers a boat's labelling needs and not much beyond it.

Two weeks in, none of the eight have dried out with the caps on, the tips haven't frayed, and the pump valve on all of them still delivers. Caps snap on with a click you can feel, which matters when the marker set lives in a tin that gets knocked off the shelf every time the boat rocks.

Per pen, I hesitated. On paper the 4.8 from around 3,000 ratings with 1,000 a month buying it says people don't mind, and I kinda get it, the paint markers do exactly what the label says, but a 12 pack from Artistro is the same money and if you're only doing rocks the extra colours matter more than the Posca flow. For labels in a cabin where everything gets bumped, the opacity and the fact they don't smudge once cured is def why I'll buy the marker set again for the units, one per tool cupbaord.

Does the Posca acrylic on painted rocks hold up through a winter outdoors without a sealer, or does it lift at the edges once frost gets under it?