Emptying 50 cal tracer jackets

[Tokarev]

What's the safest and easiest way to empty the tracers?
What will happen if I will just heat them up?

I want to empty the jackets for an experiment. :confused:

[woodsoup]

Carefully scratch the sealing compound to expose the tracer and clamp the round in a vice heal end up. Using a propane torch touch off the tracer. Make sure you wear safety glasses, leather gloves and long sleeve cotton shirt.

The tracer compound won't explode but it will throw sparks. After it gets started back off and let it burn out.

You'll have to re-size the bullet as well as remove the layer of slag on the outside before you can reuse it.

You can also use a small amount of the powder in the recess and light that off with a barbecue lighter.

GOOD LUCK!!

[Shiloh]

What about soaking in lacquer thinner? Then scraping out the sludge and rinsing out the remainder of the compound with solvent and a turkey baster or syringe.

Shiloh

[Tokarev]

What is the red seal made of?

[freddyp]

The red seal is made of plastic. If you decide to light them with a torch, I would recomend placing them in wet soil. The tracer will generate alot of heat, enough to melt some of the jacket when burning standing still. In flight, the heat generated is defeated by the cooling effect of the air flowing over the jacket. Be careful as they burn at very high temps.

[Tokarev]

The seal gave up quickly, I simply picked it with a fork at lunch. Now, the red compound can probably be dissolved in water or solvent? I need to keep the jackets intact, so burning them is not an option.

[jhrosier]

Tokarev,
Another possible source for empty bullet jackets is dummy cartridges.
I bought a bunch of dummy cartridges from some surplus outfit and pulled one apart to see how it was constructed.
I was surprised to find the jacket did not have any core.

Jack

[Tokarev]

In the end the 50 cal tracers turned out to be steel core type. I was hoping they were ball with copper jacket :(

[MtGun44]

If I'm not mistaken, even "ball" 50 cal has a steel core, just soft steel
not a hardened penetrator of the AP. The core has a bit of lead alloy
in the front and back on ball. I took one apart a very long time ago,
and I'm pretty sure it was just ball, not AP.

Bill

[freddyp]

If the jacket is straight along the sides all the way down to the base, with no boattail it's a tracer. The trace compound is pressed in under very high pressure so that it does not crack during firing. Because it contains a lot of magnessium, it appears to be solid metal when scratched with something. The compound id very hard and can't be scratched out with a nail. If you look at it very carefully, the trace compound kinda looks like the pink antacid tablets. If it has any kind of thin base plug/ cover it's a tracer. The easiest way I found to demill them is to ignite them. Take one and stick it nose first into clay all the way to the base. With the base open/exposed take the flame of a propane torch and point it into the exposed end. Wear eye protection and don't stand over it when igniting it. It will burn for about five seconds and bake some of the clay touching it. After it has cooled down, use water to wash away the clay and polish it with steel wool. Try one and see if that will work for what you want to do.

[Tokarev]

I wanted empty copper jackets, that's it. That's not going to happen, as they are inseparable from steel core.