Smell of a horse itself. Only when dry.
Leather, like the inside of new boots. The smell of boot and saddle shops.
Marvel’s Mystery Oil. Especially if using it to cool a drill bit while drilling though metal.
All of the solvents: Xylene, acetone, MEK, naptha, toluene. There’s a brew of solvents called ‘brush cleaner’ that does a fine job of extracting crud from paint brushes, and it smells great!
Today’s kids are cheated-who of my generation doesn’t remember sniffing a quiz in school? The lovely purple aroma of mimeograph paper…
There was a spray we used to use in the nursing home to treat bedsores called Granulex. The nurses hated it. I LOVED it.
Tire stores. I’m the one that gets tires on the car, just so I can sit there for a few hours.
Creosote is good. It reminds me of amusement parks.
Mimeograph ink. Anybody else remember the smell of that? As a schoolchild in the 60’s, I used love it when the teacher would passout a mimeographed handout. I’d press it to my face and inhale deeply.
Speaking of paper and ink, remember the U.S. Authorized Edition of The Lord of the Rings published by Ballantine Paperbacks in the 1960s? I obtained my copies when I was 10. It was the most intoxicating book aroma I’d ever known. While reading throughout the entire text, I would press my nose right between the pages and inhale deeply. The intoxicating scent of Ballantine ink and paper took me directly to Middle-Earth. To the Middle-Earth of a child’s imagination, which is something extra fantastic. I can still remember that smell–and, attached to it, what it felt like to escape from the Tower of Cirith Ungol.
Another vote for skunk and fresh paint.
Damn you, SDMB, I used to think I was special.