In the design of a portable Gamma-ray transistorized steel pipe thickness gauge, a pulse height discriminator and an anti-coincidence circuit could be eliminated by using a thin, less than 1/2inch, NaI(Tl) scintillation crystal in the detecting probe. This method could provide an economic design and fabrication of a gamma-ray back-scattering gauge allowing allmost the same accuracy and stability compared with the exsisting method. A gauge had been designed and fabricated with the above method and its accuracy was experimentall tested for the 200$^{circ}C$ high temperature steel pipes. The result showed that the thermal drift was less than y percent which was acceptabel in the practical applications.