Thread: Mystery rust

I thought I would share this story given how odd this problem was. I kept getting what I thought was rust on my straight razors, but strangely it always rusted on just the spine on one side that would only come off with sandpapering. I wracked my brain trying to think of what I was doing differently that would cause this to happen and spent over a week bashing my head against the wall trying to figure this out; then I got lucky. I took a rust free razor and stropped it before use and found "rust" on the spine. I then put two and two together; this wasn't rust it was strop! My red latigo strop had been getting on my razors somehow! I carefully examined my strop and found two well hidden nicks on just one edge on it. After sand papering off the nicks the mystery rust no longer shows up. After two years of stropping I had never had a nicked strop leave strop material on a razor that was so well stuck on the razor.

Lathered strops will also leave a deposit on razors after stropping, not that that would deter me.

yes, I've seen red deposits come off latigo. I had that issue myself years ago.

Yup Latigo will deposit a waxy film on the spine. WD40 on a paper towel will get it off.