Can anyone tell me how to make tracers? I have heard that they are illegal in some places, so this would be purely for curiosity value...

I'd strongly recommend against it, you need to be playing with some nasty stuff, like phosporuous and you need a hollowbased bullet and some form of wad card to place over the dried compound that you'd put in the hollow base... There are some places where you can get mil surplus 7.62 and 5.56 mm tracer heads or rounds if you really wanted to play with them. Clean the bore very well after use, tracers can leave stuff in your barrel that isn't particulary good for them.
We use them on the 50 cal and M60s we have on our ship and right after use, they get cleaned because of the salt water environment and residue in the barrel.

EXPRESS

The only centrefire tracers that I know are only available to the military

There is however a 22 rimfire tracer round made by RWS that can be used legally(at least in the UK)

Tim

[ 03-31-2003, 22:18: Message edited by: Midlander ]

Express---

Tracer compound is sold by Firefox, Inc in Pocatello, Idaho in several colors.

I tried the tracer compounds sold by another company,can`t remember the name,I still have 8 of 10 bottles left,I made them both by the wet and the dry methods they reccommended,not even one lit up.talk about dissappointed,at least they were cheap,I bought a bunch of tracer bullets at a gun show that work very well,if you enjoy running to put out fires,seem to always start right at around 5-600 yds with the orange tip 5.56`s.shooting at a 75 degree hill didn`t help much either,when they hit the points turn 90 degrees,most stay,but some will go off on an angle,we only play on very wet days,but even stopped doing that lately.I like my bullets to stay in whatever I shoot at not bounce off.