I am in love with Blue Dot powder

Rustydust

Active member
Went to the range with a couple friends yesterday. More of a play day than a get serious day. My favorite kind. Anyway, I brought along my .17 Remington and my .204 Ruger both loaded with Blue Dot powder. 10 grains for the former and 12 for the latter. I had a variety of bullets loaded in both. For the .17 I had Vmax, Nosler, Calhoon and Barnes. My very first group with the .17 gave me all 5 touching at 100 yards. That's hard to do when your bullets are only .172"! Then I swapped to the .204 with that was loaded with 26, 32, 34,and 40 grain bullets and not one group was over a half inch. And what was neat was never did I have to wait for the barrel to cool between strings. It never got hot. Excuse the pun, but how cool is that?

Our Idaho ground squirrels are small and easy to kill. So come next spring I'm going to dispatch a few of them with these reduced loads. And if I keep using them I may never have to buy another barrel! Yippee!
 
Originally Posted By: GLShooterThat sounds really interesting. Any theoretical speeds on those?

Greg

According to my load data they are around 3000 fps. While I had my chronograph in my truck I never took it out. I was just testing for group size yesterday. If the weather holds I well be back out tomorrow to check speeds and make sure that I can duplicate those groups.
 
That sounds more than adequate as it would equal my 17 Win Super Mag. Cheaper to shoot than that one too unless you are buying $100.00/brick primers.

Greg
 
Originally Posted By: GLShooterThat sounds more than adequate as it would equal my 17 Win Super Mag. Cheaper to shoot than that one too unless you are buying $100.00/brick primers.

Greg

I have lot of .17 Remington brass. Most of it is loaded ammo but all I got to do to get empties is to shoot it up, right? So I will do that a bit more come spring. That's the plan anyway. And primers I have too. Neat thing about these low pressure rounds is that you can use pistol primers if you want. The guy (Seafire) that developed these loads uses them quite often and says that either is good.
 
I used to shoot 600 rounds on my 221 and 223 with fire ball loads. The fire ball did not get hard to clean till I got up to 900 rounds without cleaning, Shilen Select match Stainless barrels. I shot the 50g Speer TNT in the fire ball, had a range of loads:

50g tnt at 2600 for short range shooting, Blue Dot
50g tnt at 3000 with 1680
50g tnt at 3200 with AA1680

Remington brass was all there were in those days
 
Originally Posted By: spotstalkshootHow dirty a burn are those loads? Easy to clean?

My .204 took me two passes of solvent soaked patches to clean this morning. I like that.
 
In the same theme I use 800x for my lowpower rifle loads 222 Rem, 223 and 5.6x50R Mag. It also loads my 12ga coyote loads 1 1/4 oz NP BB's. Calhoun started with 800x for light loads and then moved to Bluedot as it metered better.

Data is available over at the Calhoun Bullet sight.
 
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Working with wildcats and developing loads is one thing.

The seafire blue dot stuff is off the table for me. He banged his drum around a bunch of different forums years ago. At that time he was bragging on full tilt speeds in a 7mag with blue dot. Show me what kind of pressures and the curve, he never could. He claimed the powder manufactures would not do the load data for BD because they would lose money and sales on all the other powders.

One can do as they please.
Powder and primers are cheap.
Guns and hospital bills are expensive.
 
Originally Posted By: jsh

One can do as they please.
Powder and primers are cheap.
Guns and hospital bills are expensive.

I for one have not heard of anyone blowing up their guns and getting hospitalized using reduced charges of Blue Dot. Is there a link that you can share with us with this happening?
 
I added a link to the Bludot blowup in my post.

Calhoun is where I got my 800x reduced loads for m rifles.
 
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Rustydust and I were at the range yesterday soaking up what may have been the last good day of warm weather we may see until next spring. We both shot some amazing groups with his Blue Dot loads in his 17 Remington. All loads were shot with 10.0 grains of Blue Dot and CCI 400 primers.

Here's a 5-shot group Rustydust shot with the 20 grain V-Max:



Here's a 3-shot group I shot with the 25 grain Berger:



Fantastic powder for reduced loads, but certainly must be used with caution.
 
Shoot the squirrel's eye out, Eh? Good shooting!

I bet a 22/250 and 243 Winchester loaded with 55g-58g would do very well with blue dot also!

Would be great loads for saving fox and cat pelts.
 
Originally Posted By: ackleymanShoot the squirrel's eye out, Eh? Good shooting!

I bet a 22/250 and 243 Winchester loaded with 55g-58g would do very well with blue dot also!

Keith, my .243 AI with either 19 grains of Blue Dot (.243 brass) or 20 grains of Blue Dot (.243 AI brass) will flat out one ragged hole at 100 yards with the inexpensive 55 grain Nosler spitzer. And trust me, even though they are moving only around 3000 fps they will flat put a ground squirrel in orbit. So much fun.

I got back from the local range just hour ago. I had some 26 grain Barnes Varmint Grenades loaded in some Fiocchi brass for my .204 that I wanted to try. 12 grains of Blue Dot was lit by WW primers and nothing was even as much as half inch at 100 yards. I screwed my suppressor on but for some reason that opened my groups up quite a bit. Drat. But no biggie- with my muzzle break on the gun the recoil was like that of my .17 HMR. Not kidding. How nice was that? Muffs still a requirement but sure no need to double stuff.

I am not new to using Blue Dot in rifle rounds but as of late I have been on a kick to try and find something that it does not work good in. This has been a lot of fun and come squirrel season next year you can bet that I will be heading out with a plethora of Blue Dot loads. You can count on that for sure.
 
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Rusty,
I loaded my first Blue Dot loads after I read Calhouns article in the Varmint Hunter. Been hooked ever since.
 
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