What happened to Green Dot?

[Texas10mm]

Sure there are reasons and good ones too.

If you were in charges of the budget how do you justify the expense and time spent on developing handgun load data for a shotgun powder when your company has plenty of data for the handgun powders they sell? It is very expensive to develops the data and takes away access to the equipment when it's needed to test and develop new powders.

Like I already said, when powders were few we used what we had and crossed over a lot. It's no longer necessary and we are lucky to have so many good choices available to us today. I no longer use Red Dot or Green Dot in handgun loading and never did use Blue Dot and rarely used Herco. Nothing wrong with any of them but now days there are better choices available which are more accurate and cleaner. (although I wouldn't hesitant to go back to Red Dot/Promo if need be)

Blue Dot is one of the best powders for 10mm full power loads.

 

[entropy]

Blue Dot is one of the best powders for 10mm full power loads.

I made some hellaciously hot .357's with it back in my teen years, too.

 

[Random 8]

The moral of the story is never throw out your old manuals. I made that mistake when I gave away the old promotional manuals from Hercules, IMR and Hodgdon from the 80's. Still have my Lyman 47th which lists many powders that are out of favor today. Came in handy during the great powder "shortage."

The part I do not understand is why Alliant no longer has the data available for load testing already done. I know those old pamphlets had the basic cast bullet loads for all common calibers using both Green and Red dot. Most are no longer to be found.

 

[greenmtnguy]

Some of my most consistent shooting loads for 45ACP, 45Colt are using Green Dot and cast lead bullets in 225-255gn weight.
I like the stuff. Alot.

 

[George P]

I would have guessed less than 50% are heavily used in shotgun loads. I would be interested to see a list. The volume/energy ratio is more important for shotgun powders.

Clay family of powders, the Dot family of powders (and the new competitve ones) are all shotgun powders as are 700X, 800X, LilGun (410), 296, and on and on. While most shotgun powders can be used in handguns, the reverse is not always true

 

[Dudedog]

Random 8
I have these from Alliant 2000 (zomm using your browser to see better)

 

[tactikel]

I love Green Dot. I use it for: 12 ga Target, 20 ga Target, .45 ACP, 9mm, 38 spl. 30-06 cast, .223 cast. What I can't understand is how expensive it is!

 

[lckdnldd]

Castpics is a great place for older load data. I have hard copied everything I could find there.

do some Internet searches for old Alliant load data such as this repository of Alliant manuals from 2000-2014 along with 4 older years. Lots of Green Dot recipes for handgun loads.

Green Dot is an excellent powder that produces full pressure at slightly lower MV's than Unique and with higher MV's than a maxed-out Red Dot load. I love it in 9/40/45ACP. The only downside is the huge flakes. Make sure you tap your powder measure as the meter fills up and after it dumps out so you don't end up with squibs. I've had a "brass rod" session with a couple of handgun barrels when first using Green Dot.

 

[bluetopper]

I think the powder manufacturors are trying to designate their current lines of powders for either handgun or shotgun and not give out any crossover data so they can sell more powder

 

[LiveLife]

I love Green Dot.

What I can't understand is how expensive it is!

Then switch to Promo and use with Red Dot load data.

Hard to beat $114/8 lbs.

 

[George P]

Except Red Dot data is not the same as Green Dot data.

If you buy powder in 8# jugs, the $/LB is a lot less than buying 1#s.