I have a 14 inch contender in 218 Mashburn Bee. I thought maybe Blue Dot would work, no luck.
It is too hot here to shoot outdoors, so I went to the local indood range. At 25 yards it was keyholing some of the shots, the rest were all over the place. I was shooting 40 Gr V Max. Then I loaded some with 14 Gr of AA 1680, and they all went in the same hole. Maybe my barrel just dosen't like Blue Dot.
Lyle

Your headline says "Blue Dot fail."

That is vey misleading. It did not fail you; you just did not find a suitable load using it.

Also, you wrote: At 25 yards it was keyholing some of the shots..."

A powder itself does not make a bullet tumble. Perhaps you did not reach the velocity to stabilize the streamlined V-Max, but again, that is NOT the fault of the powder.

this is NOT a blue dot failure. please change to title to "why keyholing" or "a contender spraying shots.

thanks
jeffe

Apparently, none of the loads you used, which you don't list, didn't produce sufficient velocity to stabilize the bullet but did clearly expel the bullet at some velocity. So in a sense they did work just not well.

What loads did you use? Perhaps you might get some insight as to what might work.


LWD