N_Cook wrote:

Adrian Tuddenham wrote in message
nvalid.invalid...
N_Cook wrote:

[...]
And in the case of rotted horse manure smell from some types of old
transformer windings perhaps Caproic Acid or Hexanoic acid giving that
smell

Some pre war Philips radio sets had rubber-covered wiring that stank
like rotted manure when you touched it with a soldering iron. I have no
idea what they used in it that was different from other makes.

--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
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www.poppyrecords.co.uk


Any idea what the distinctive (neutral, not pleasant not unpleasant) smell
is of ex-services electronic equipment is (UK anyway). If you go down the
lines of a radio rally/ hamfest the pitch of the guys specialising in
selling military surplus is quite distinctive. Military tropicalisation ?
anti-fungal spray ? mothballing agent ?

There are two smells I associate with that sort of thing. One is
Chatterton's Compound, a sort of tar used to fill cable jointing boxes,
it was more common in government surplus stores.

The other comes from a shellac-based varnish that was used to
tropicalise paxolin tagboards, but I don't know the cause of that smell
because shellac is supposed to be odourless. It isn't a fungicide
additive because I have smelled it when opening up some equipment I
built myself a long time ago. I had tropicalised it with a varnish
which I made by dissolving shellac flakes in alcohol, there were no
other ingredients.

--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk