Tracer paint

NateDog

NateDog

New member
Anyone know if you can buy/make tracer (phosphorus) paint so you could make tracer bullets out of hunting bullets? I always wanted to do that and would give a pretty penny if it could happen.
 
Why not just buy tracer projectiles and load them yourself? They can usually be found at most gun shows. They are rather har on barrels and an extreme fire hazzard.
 
Six problems:
Paint won't work, although real tracers are available.
Tracers are very corrosive to barrels.
Tracers are an extreme fire hazard.
Tracers are illegal for hunting in most states.
Tracers are not very accurate, just mass military production.
Even if your state doesn't specifically outlaw tracers it probably does outlaw FMJ bullets for hunting. I have never seen a tracer that was not a FMJ.

Jack
 
That is why I wanted to get the paint that they use on military tracer rounds to put on a hunting bullet, not an FMJ that you can buy.
 
Nate,
The paint is just an identifying marking so that you will know what a loaded round is. Different color for AP, etc...
The actual tracer compound is nested in the base of the bullet.
 
It is not a "phosphorus" paint... it is a pellet that is put in a hole in the base, under ~50,000 psi pressure.

Working with the compounds is not for the faint of heart... it is very bad stuff.

Plus, if it's a hunting bullet and open in the front, and you open it at the back... the pressure will likely push the core out and leave the jacket in the barrel... also a very bad thing!

.
 
Nate what everyone is telling you is this simply won't work. Commercial tracer materials are very nasty stuff to handle. It sounds like a great idea, but isn't. You need to move on to something else.
 
Recalling my Army days, I believe tracer rounds were only used in larger caliber weapons like the 20mm...I think. At least, I never fired one out of my M-16.
 
Well I guess mythbusters was wrong in their description. They said that the paint was what ignighted when the friction from the air passed over the paint at high velocities. I shot a couple out of my .223 one evening and wished they could be made for hunting rounds. Oh well, no big deal. Just thought it would be cool.
 
Yep, tracer is the "stuff" inside the bullet, not the paint on the outside.
If you want the name of the "stuff" let me know and I can look it up...its in the T.O.
 
Quote:
Recalling my Army days, I believe tracer rounds were only used in larger caliber weapons like the 20mm...I think. At least, I never fired one out of my M-16.



It was made for many calibers, even handgun. And I've never been impressed by the Mythbusters' weapon knowledge.
 
Quote:

... I've never been impressed by the Mythbusters' weapon knowledge.



I was thinking about that last night. I wanted to e-mail them and ask if they would hire me to be their on site gun guy. How cool would that be.
 
Quote:
I never fired one out of my M-16.



I never did either, but they had them. I have .223 tracers in my possession right now. The bad thing is, they give away your position when you fire them. That's probably why they don't issue them to the grunts. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
Our M-60's didn't have tracers in the belt, either, or our aircraft 20mm gatling guns, we fired HE-I out of that.
 
TNyoteboy said:
Quote:
Recalling my Army days, I believe tracer rounds were only used in larger caliber weapons like the 20mm...I think. At least, I never fired one out of my M-16.



It was made for many calibers, even handgun. And I've never been impressed by the Mythbusters' weapon knowledge.
Click to expand...
Wow, I haven't see references to the M16 in awhile. I was deployed to Bagram in the summer of 2002 and was issued a no-frills M4 which was very similar to what was used in training. I don't know the proper answer to the various tracer-round questions being asked here, but I do own a few boxes of (XM856) 5.56 x 45 64-grain tracer rounds. I purchased these as a civilian about 5-years-ago from one of the big online gun stores (I think it was Primary Arms).
 
There is a non-incendiary tracer ammo that has luminescent paint on the base that charges from the muzzle flash, it is pistol ammo though.

Brand name: Streak ammo
 
Tracers do not give away your position because they do not light up immediately but after more then 60 years don’t remember exactly how far out. In the Marine Corps we did not use tracers to see where we were hitting, as Marines we knew what and where we were hitting. The main purpose was to let us know when a barrel needed to be changed. In the full autos like the Browning 30’s and M60 ad 50’s, when you saw he tracers begin to wonder, you knew it was time to change barrel
 
With the old full autos BAR with 20 round mags you seldom shot enough fast enough to burn a barrel, but with the lighter full auto M14, you could burn up a barrel fairly fast and the tracers told you when
 
Tracers were originally used in anti-aircraft/air-ground MGs so the gunner/pilot could 'see' where the rnds were going. Lots of wind currents up there.
 


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