"Tracer" boolit lube?

[icebones762]

Im sure a few of you guys on here have heard of the bullet lube used during the civil war era burning off the projectile in flight leaving behind a faint smoke trail. The civil war recipe for lube was something like 1 part tallow to 8 parts beeswax. Well that got me wondering, has anybody done something like this? I know a faint smoke trail wont be the same as modern tracer rounds but it sounds like something interesting so work up in the garage sometime. And Im sure it will make for some fun range time. Anyone have any success making boolit lube leave a consistent smoke trail?

[runfiverun]

if you have some in a hollow base it would work.
lube generally is flung off a boolit at the muzzle [or at least we hope so]

[rlb]

If you could get it to burn long enough that would make for some fun long range shooting.

[icebones762]

a hollow base projectile packed with ball of cotton smeared in axle grease with CoW to keep the powder from absorbing the grease sound like a good starting point? Or drilling a small 1/8'' hole in the base and gluing a short piece of cannon fuze? Im not going for match grade loads just something more of a novelty to play around with.

[357maximum]

you can/could actually buy little stickers for the base of your boolit that will turn them into tracers of sorts...seen them somewhere...not sure where.


I have thought about dissolving gunpowder in acetone and "tumble" lubing a few boolits to see if that would work, but never did it....you are on your own with that one...I never had the testicular fortitute to actually try it.

[GabbyM]

When pressure exceeds alloy strength in my 270 Win. Most of the lube goes up in smoke. They do leave a streak I’m told. Thing is the plume of smoke is about 10% of a black powder rifle. So from behind the muzzle I can’t see anything but a cloud.

May be a tricky balancing act to get a smoke trail that won’t turn into a smoke screen. Spotters or spectators off to the side could see it though.

Maybe a Forster hollow pointer to drill the base. Pour in a little mixture. Alox lube maybe. You could probably drill an eighth inch hole in a 30 caliber gas check and not weaken it to much.

[Bigslug]

Im sure a few of you guys on here have heard of the bullet lube used during the civil war era burning off the projectile in flight leaving behind a faint smoke trail.

My first question is :How the heck would they have known considering the black powder fog bank in front of them?

It's possible that what they were seeing was burning cartridge paper. As I understand their loading process, it was (a.) rip the cartridge open with your teeth, (b.) pour the powder down the bore, (c.) shove the remainder of the cartridge down the bore with the Minie ball. What I'm not 100% sure of is if the Minie ball itself was held in the teeth or if it was the back end of the cartridge. Either way, the ball ended up sitting on some amount of paper cartridge wrapping. This might either turn to confetti on leaving the bore, or end up smoldering away in the bullet's hollow base. I doubt the minimal duration of heat from BP would be enough to ignite lube, considering that both the bullet and the barrel would be acting as heat sinks.

[waksupi]

I recall years ago shooting with Rick Bachman, of Old West Reproductions. I don't know what lube he was shooting in his .44-40, but every shot had a tracer of smoke following the boolit. We were doing cowboy shoots and at pretty close range, so I don't know how far the trace would have been visible.

[.22-10-45]

The Gardiner explosive bullet used a 1 1/2 sec. fuse..this was probably visible in flight.

[BIG RON]

How do we make those???

[khmer6]

There are commercial stickers that gives the effect. The it would be nice to make a lube tho. Hell a lot safer than shooter hot arrrse tracers