Bought a new grinder on amazon. Rinsed it with water and after I dried it off I noticed that there were these marks on it (circled in red). I rubbed some iso alc on it but no dice. Are these part of the manufacturing process or should I just not use this grinder?
it looks like early rust signs to me, unless the alcohol somehow fucked with the "metal"...next time clean with an old toothbrush or similar.
Probably a manufacturing blemish. I have an aluminum grinder that accumilates copius amounts of dirt along the edges and it's hard to clean.
It's aluminum so it would be impossible for it to be "rust". Rust is iron oxide. In this case, what you're seeing is aluminum oxide. You washed the grinder and didn't dry it properly. On a microscopic level, the water found it's way to a pinhole in the aluminum's surface and penetrated it and "grew". Now, that microscopic hole is corroding. I got caught up in the grinder thing a few years ago…bought a Mendo Mulcher….couple weeks later, the same thing happened. It's not a good idea to smoke aluminum shavings or aluminum oxide. You'd be better off to buy a cheap pair of cuticle scissors and chop up your bud that way, instead. That's what I do now.