Hi,

I was cleaning some of my rusty tools by bathing them in vinager.

It was a pretty slow clean as I'm used to leaving it for 2 - 3 days but when I returned I had an unusual reaction which I'm hoping you can tell me what happened?

It's got a very unique aroma of copper grease but this wouldn't had corroded the sockets.

I think the black cake is copper oxide but what about the red and orange?

Any help greatly appreciated.

What were the tools made of? Were they an alloy of copper and iron? If not, it is highly unlikely (read: impossible) that you would get copper oxide if there was no copper in the tool to begin with. If there was copper present in the mix somewhere, the red color might come from copper (I) oxide, which has a red color. If iron was present in the sample, the orange-red color is almost certainly due to the presence of ferric acetate.