Loading pulled US Military tracers.

[DGW1949]

I have a line on some fairly cheep Lake City .556 tracers from "pulled down" ammo which I'd like to buy and reload.
Anyone had any experience with doing this, or know what powder I'd need?
Reason that I'm asking is that the vendor says to only use powders which are approved for use in tracer ammo. I have no idea what powders that may be.

Thanks.

DGW

 

[Tellico]

I don't know about the powder issue, but I have pulled a few 30-06 tracers and loaded them in a .300 Win Mag with no problem. Maybe the vendor wants to sell the pull down powder?

 

[Mobuck]

"only use powders which are approved for use in tracer ammo"
If you're not concerned about the tracers lighting, any normal powder is fine. The tracers were originally loaded with somewhat "hotter" burning powder in order to improve the function of the tracer.

 

[rugerjunkie]

DGW,

I have a pretty good pile of them myself. I havn't gotten around to loading any up yet so I'm pretty interested in any comments here myself. I plan on loading them up with H335 and seeing how they shoot. Don't know if you want them to light or not...I don't care if they do. I just want to run them through my 1in7 barrel to see how accuracy is and plink away. If i recall , they are a 64 grain bullet.

 

[Tellico]

"only use powders which are approved for use in tracer ammo"
If you're not concerned about the tracers lighting, any normal powder is fine. The tracers were originally loaded with somewhat "hotter" burning powder in order to improve the function of the tracer.

You are on to something here. If I recall only maybe 1-2 out of 5 lit up with mine. They were from WW II though and I loaded them in 73-74 with 4831. I also loaded some armor piercing that I never could recover one of and I dug pretty far in a bank after shooting through different things. :lol:
Fred

 

[Mobuck]

I think the 223 tracers were commonly loaded with WCC844"T" while the standard ball(FMJ) was loaded with WCC844. The "T" was supposed to produce hotter gas in the bore. From my experience, WCC 844 is equivalent to H335.
I'd expect IMR 4895 to light them if you can get enough of it in the case to produce desired velocity.