Friend of mine carried a 5.56 round with him in the war and asked me to make it safe for him. Pulled the bullet and its a tracer. I can pop the primer and dump the powder but how do I make the tracer bullet safe? It means a lot to him and he wants that bullet back in the case.

If the primer is fired what's not safe about it. The powder charge ignites the tracer????

Thanks Lee, I just did not know and wanted to be sure.

I agree, it is safe. If you really want to get the tracer compound out though you can. Upon occasion just for fun when bored in the field, we would take a tracer slug and put it in a C Ration can on top of a Trioxane bar and light it. Once the slug gets hot enough, like half a minute or so, the compound burns off like a little rocket engine. It doesn't scoot the can along or anything, it just looks cool. The slug itself could then be polished up.

If it were me I would just reload the intact tracer. Then I would source a few tracer rounds, pull one or two and burn it off. There is a surprising amount of energy inside a 5.56 tracer slug.