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The original was posted on /r/tools by /u/Impressive_Engine_64 on 2023-08-15 23:44:51+00:00.

The butyric acid answer is what I’m flooded with when looking this up, but in my case I don’t think this makes much sense. Let me explain as I’ve only ever encountered this myself with 2 tools in all my life.

I first encountered this smell about a year and a half ago when I purchased a brand new set of chisels. It puzzled me then, and the answer I found predominantly online was it’s the handles degrading and so I kind of settled with that. They still smell to this day, albeit not as pungently – which does suggest it can dissipate and hopefully made to disappear (only with a half-life the likes of which is long enough to carbon date stuff).

Today I purchased a brand spanking new pillar drill, el cheapo like and on clearance but brand spankers nonetheless. I open the box and start unpacking it, and as I pick the manual up (wrapped in plastic), I get a nasty off-smelling whiff of something that my senses tell me is greasy, like a rancid grease smell. It’s not like vomit, and it’s not like feet, but it’s hard to say it’s far off the scale of either or both combined. I put the manual down, and proceed to casually sniff my fingers ‘just to see’, as you do; lo’ and behold my fingers wreak of this penetrating, permeating smell. It ‘travels’ onto anything it comes into contact with, and even non-contact transfer of confined in the same space, such that the paper manual smells after having been unwrapped from the plastic. It will not simply wash off my hands, although there’s no residue whatever.

This is a pillar drill. There are no decomposing screwdriver handles in sight, and generally the majority of the thing is made from metal. Although it does have plastic knobs for the lever and a guard. But that plastic couldn’t possibly be old enough to be degrading, could it? And are the tool plastics even made in the same way these days… So I have my doubts about the acid being the culprit. It does have metal moving parts, though, and naturally these will be greased up from the factory process.

So my gut really goes with the grease has ‘gone off’, but is this absurd? Can oil go rancid under the circumstances?