can anyone tell me about tracer rounds.. how they work, is it easy to reload, bad pionts,good pionts etc!!

When I way an employ of Uncle all that we could all "scrounge" out of the ordnance guy for our hunting rifles was some 30-06 tracer ammo WWII vintage. Great way to start a fire around dry brush! We noticed smoke coming from behind the target! Can anyone say SCRAMBLE!

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NRA Life member

[This message has been edited by Bear Claw (edited 12-29-2001).]

Great fun for shooting but other than that and miltary use. I don't see what they would be used for.

ange,

The tracer itself is bullet with the back of its jacket filled with what I believe is phosphorous. This is what is illuminated when the round is discahrged.

What Bear Claw said about starting fires is definitely true. I know I have burnt down my share of training areas with fires started from tracers.

Before bore sighters I always though home brew tracers would be the cool way to get on target at the shooting range.

I bought about twenty tracers to reload once. They didnt work, all I got was a poof of smoke at the target( a dead tree at 100 yards). I bought them with some loaded tracers at the same time and all the loaded rounds lit up.

Tracers are bullets with a burnable chemical compound imbedded in a cavity in the base. This chemical compound can be compared closely to that which is used in highway flares, and some people in making their own tracers do use flare compound as a filler.

Not all powders are hot enough in burning temperature to ignite tracer compound(s). As a result, sometimes a home-loaded cartridge will fail to trace. At other times, the tracer compound may be old and less ignitable.

Paladin

I have reloaded pulled military tracers. I looked in Cartridges of the World to see what the powder charge was for tracers versus ball. They used the same powder load, so I just loaded them the same as I did my regular bullet. Worked just fine. Tracers have an uncertain self life.

If you are going to buy a bulk load of tracer bullets, take a portion of them (if they will let you), load them and shoot them. If only 60 percent of the sample lot works, only pay 60 percent of what he wanted for the entire lot.

Tracers are illegal in Kalifornia, and they do start fires.

I perfer tracers in BMG, and 4.0 caliber.
Very nice, and wonderful to shoot at night.

Awesome stuff.

Just keep them on the range...
Or better yet, shoot them over the ocean, on the 4th.

gs