I read a some of the posts concerning Seafire's testing using Blue Dot for light loads.

I have nearly 10lbs of Red Dot and I have no Blue Dot at all.

Is Blue better than Red for these types of apps?

I have loaded "The Load", which is 13g. Red Dot w/any bullet weight (cases bigger than 30-30). It seems fine in my 06 as far as accuracy goes. 13g. of Red Dot is too much for the 30-30, it likes about 10g.

I load for a 222, 284Win M-100, 30-30 and 30-06. I would like a super quiet city load for the 222, a load for the 284 that wont harm the action w/too much or too little port pressure and a soft coyote load for the 06.

I like the idea but as I said, I got the tons of Red and no Blue blues.


Thanks for your reply.
Redrider.

The advantage of Blue Dot over Red Dot is that Blue Dot is slower, lots of shotgun hunters have it on hand, and it takes higher charge weights. Because of that, double charges are much more evident.

If you want to find out more about red dot loads, do a Google on red dot and "the load". It's about red dot and '06 class cartridges. HTH, Dutch.

I haven't messed with Red Dot for a couple of reasons.

Nothing against the powder at all, I have never used it for anything.

However, with much lower charges it increases the chance of a double charge by quite a bit if someone is not paying attention to what they are doing,,,,,,
or in my case, a wife that sticks her nose in the garage all the time with the " honey can you give me a quick hand with...." Never fails when I am right in the middle of something.

Second reason is that, even thought I am interested in the downloading, Red Dot and Green Dot would give even slower velocity than I was looking for. My goal was to have a 200 yd big game cartridge potential, which meant I at least needed a velocity of 2250 fps for the 200yds.

Since 90 % of all game is taken within the 100 yd range and under. Also if you check out ballistic charts, 3.5 inches high at 100 yds, will put you dead on at 200 with most spire points and Round Noses even. I am a fan of the Round Nose fraternity. A little Kentucky windage, depending on how good you are at it, will stretch that useful range to 225 to 250 yds.

Blue Dot has also proven to be real accurate and consistent with its velocity, having a minimal standard deviation spread when I chronograph it. It has done a better job of these two criterias, than any other downloading powder I have tried.

I hope maybe someone with an oversupply of Blue Dot is looking to trade a guy in Seattle that has an oversupply of Red Dot.

Cheers and Good Shooting
Seafire

There are lots of Red Dot reduced loads listed in the Lyman cast bullet hand book:


I have shot reduced loads in Red Dot and in Blue Dot.

Blue Dot is said to have fluffyness prevents double charges and burns clean.
Calhoon went from 800X to Blue Dot giving up noise and efficency for the clean burn.
http://www.jamescalhoon.com/tobee2.html

I do know that Red Dot has the advantage of being quieter than Blue Dot for the same velocity and the disadvantage of not metering in my RCBS Uniflow powder measure.

At this time, my super quiet loads may use Red Dot, but I am weighing every charge.

seafire said:
However, with much lower charges it increases the chance of a double charge by quite a bit if someone is not paying attention to what they are doing,,,,,,


The 'load' of Red dot is somewhat over 1/2 case full (red dot is very fluffy), so a double charge won't slip through. However, as clark said, it meters rather poorly, so getting consistant charges can be tough.


Personaly, I used red dot and 700x for trap shooting. I have large quanities of 700x which I use for reduced loads. 700x meters better than red dot for me. But I don't get the velocities that you get with with blue dot.


JerryO

I concur with Jerry O. The only thing I would look at RedDot is that I would be looking at lower velocities with Red Dot.

Which is not bad. It just depends on what you are looking for.

I would have no problem using Red Dot or Green Dot for reduced loads. I really need to experiment some with them I guess. I just expect under 2000 fps with Red Dot or Green Dot but I expect over 2000 fps with Blue Dot.

Actually Blue Dot seems to like 2400 fps with lighter bullets in a caliber and around 2200 with the heavier bullets. IN a 6.5 x 55 tho, with a 160 grain RN it only got to 2000 fps before it got too hot and popped a primer .

So I'd use the Red Dot without any worrries, just make your expectation equal to the powders ability.

Cheers and Good shooting
Seafire

Personally, the thing I like about Blue Dot is that the larger charges makes any scale errors (I weigh all my charges) proportionally smaller. i don't know what pressures these reduced loads are running at, so assuming the worst, I'd rather work with Blue Dot where a 0.5gr error in a 25gr load is a 2% increase rather than a 0.5gr error in a 13gr load which is close to a 4% increase. Just being safe...
Cheers...
Con