What happened to Green Dot?

Data is hard to find, but Green dot is excellent midrange powder.

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.

Perhaps they have reformulated Green Dot and have not tested it.

I'm guessing with all the new powders on the market they feel no need to provide handgun data for a shotgun powder any more. While I like Green Dot I found it has a narrow sweet spot so it's been a long time since I used it. (other than the 1.5lbs I burnt during the shortage in the .38 Spl and 45 Auto)

It's just a guess and I also noticed less current data for Red Dot too, but to a lesser extent since the available data for Red Dot was more available than Green Dot to start with.

Livin_Cincy said:

Perhaps they have reformulated Green Dot and have not tested it.

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No powder company would reformulate a powder to the extent new data is required and still keep the same name. That would make all the previous data, sometimes decades of data obsolete which is a very dangerous situation.

One Bullseye gunsmith warns against shotshell powders in his tight pistols, saying they are abrasive.

Jim Watson said:

One Bullseye gunsmith warns against shotshell powders in his tight pistols, saying they are abrasive.

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Just for giggles, I pulled out some of my older Lyman manuals.

About 3/4 of the powders used in the handgun section also show up in the shotgun section.

From the Hodgdon reloading center,

SHOTSHELL POWDER APPLICATION IN PISTOL
One of the many benefits of reloading is setting the components and performance of handloaded ammunition based upon individual reloader preference. In many cases, a powder designed for use in shotgun reloading can be used with success in handloading some pistol ammunition.

As always, only data as shown in the Hodgdon Reloading Data Center (RDC) can be used. Hodgdon is aware that some of your favorite shotgun powders can work in pistol loads and data is shown in the RDC. Examples of shotgun powders that have pistol reloading data:

• Hodgdon Longshot™
• Hodgdon HS6™
• Hodgdon Clays™
• Hodgdon Universal Clays™
• Hodgdon 700-X
• Hodgdon PB
• Hodgdon 800-X
• Winchester® WST

These powders work best in:

• .38 Special
• .45 Auto
• 9mm Luger
• .40 S&W

Texas10mm said:

Almost all handgun powders are also shotgun powders.

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I well know many handgun powders are also shotgun powders by many of the newer powders are not. If you look on the Alliant the only current powder listed under both handgun and shotgun powders is Unique. You will see similar listings on the other powder company sites. Western powders have no crossover powders listed on their Accurate or Ramshot sites. It seems only the older powders crossover, probably because there were so few powders back then.

No doubt.

But consider this. If I make a powder, and call it AB1 and say it's a pistol powder only and do not use in shotshells, then I package the same powder as 1BA and say use only in handguns, I sell twice as much powder.

Now if a dumb old mountain man like me can figure this out, them old boys from Harvard can to.

We live in a time when not too many people want "medium" anything. They all want "EXTREME HIGH POWER MAGNUM +P" stuff........ I have always really liked Green Dot for pistol loads and have many old manuals with dope for it.

All of my Green Dot is from the 1980's. It didn't like being stored in a garage in Arkansas and then a garage in Texas. In the 20-teens, when I unearthed it, it was only providing 40% of the velocities it had when it was new. It was the only powder to go into storage for 30+ years and suffer that much degradation in performance.

My Red Dot, Blue Dot, Bullseye, IMR-4198 and IMR-4227 all performed like I had just taken them out of a stasis field, but the Green Dot was a real eye-opener.

Texas10mm said:

it seems that Green Dot has almost fallen off the map for reloading handguns.

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During the "Great Component Shortage", I tested many powders including Green Dot and found it fairly close to W231/HP-38/Sport Pistol in application.

Problem was due to larger flake size, it metered with less consistency and accuracy was not as good as other powders (like W231/HP-38). And depending on caliber, I was limited to very light target loads. For my pistol loads during the shortage, there were better powders like Red Dot/Promo (for 9mm/45ACP) and even Herco (for 40S&W). When shortage ended, I liked Promo so much that it became my general purpose plinking powder for 9mm/45ACP. And now that newer Promo is "blended" to meter better, it permanently replaced Red Dot. While I favor BE-86 for 40S&W, I would gladly use Herco for 40S&W as it produced good accuracy and was the cleanest burning powder I used for 40S&W (even inside of spent cases came out clean).

And since the shortage, there have been many new powders released like Alliant Sport Pistol, IMR Target, Shooters World Clean Shot/Lovex D032-03, Vectan Ba 9.5, Winchester 244 to load calibers that Green Dot was used for in addition to popular powders like Bullseye/WST/Titegroup/N320/No 2/W231/HP-38/Zip - https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...-different-labels.797388/page-6#post-10806193

So perhaps Green Dot will remain shotgun powder primarily until the next shortage (But thanks to the last shortage, I know I could make Green Dot work for my 9mm/40S&W/45ACP loads ).

ArchAngelCD said:

No powder company would reformulate a powder to the extent new data is required and still keep the same name. That would make all the previous data, sometimes decades of data, obsolete which is a very dangerous situation.

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As you say, the powder has probably not been reformulated. However, the biggest reason you DO NOT want to use pre-2000 data is that the method of chamber pressure testing radically changed about that time. When chamber pressure testing changed from a one-time crushed copper cup to pressure transducers connected to a computer (which take thousands of readings every second), then every load data manual got re-written.

Some loads increased the Max Load, but most of the loads that ended up being changed got reduced. That's why you only want to use new data.

Texas10mm said:

Years ago when I started loading pistol rounds there was a lot of data for Green Dot powder in pistol rounds. Now it seems that Green Dot has almost fallen off the map for reloading handguns. Even Alliant has scant data.

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You're correct. There's no reason for Alliant could not to provide at least some minimal Green Dot data.

Speaking as a long-time research engineer, I speculate that when companies like Lyman, Speer and Hornady want to compile a new load manual, they call Alliant and ask for powder samples. Alliant's marketing department, sensitive to the fact that the company just spent $1M+ to develop several new powder lines, is a lot more likely to provide their latest offerings rather than provide the same powders they did 10-20 years ago. Their thinking is... "The people who love Green Dot will continue to use it no matter what. However, people coming into the hobby want to buy the latest-greatest powders, so let's not miss this opportunity to show off our newest products."

So it's not that the old guard powders are "bad" or no longer offered, but rather the overwhelming financial need to get the newer products selling.

You are right about the big Green Dot flakes bds. In a big shotshell bushing with 15-20 grains of Green Dot, the big flakes don't pose much of a problem especially when you have 1/2 to 1 grain jumps between bushings and 1/2 grain difference isn't much of a performance hit. In a small 4-5 grain cavity those big flakes can make a big difference.

During the powder shortage I was using 800-X which has huge flakes and found that with a short-fat cylinder powder measure, I was able to get a much better drop consistency. Hand trickling the powder showed that 800-X was one of the best performing powders I've used in a long time, but it may be the hand trickling as much as the powder itself.

I've used Green Dot for most all of my non-magnum handgun loads for several decades now. It's got a goldilocks burn rate and volumetric fill for most of my mid-range loads, and it's clean enough to keep me happy. I've not found it to be overly difficult to get acceptable metering accuracy in the Lee AutoDisk that I"m prone to use. Over the years, I've collected and used lab-tested Green Dot recipes for 9mm, 40S&W, 45ACP, 38 Special, and so forth - I don't have to rely on online data.

Last that I looked, I still have three (3) unopened 8lb jugs sitting around.

Texas10mm said:

Almost all handgun powders are also shotgun powders.

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It would be more accurate to say almost all shotgun powders are usable for some handgun application or another. Green Dot is one of them.

rfwobbly said:

You're correct. There's no reason for Alliant could not to provide at least some minimal Green Dot data.

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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)

Drail said:

We live in a time when not too many people want "medium" anything. They all want "EXTREME HIGH POWER MAGNUM +P" stuff........ I have always really liked Green Dot for pistol loads and have many old manuals with dope for it.

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Green Dot is an excellent target powder. when I shot Bullseye competition, I used a lot of it.

But likes change over the years, and today it's all about "Power Factor."

Also, most good trainers tell students to practice with ammo that has a similar POI, and recoil impulse as their SD/HD load.

Since my "carry" loads are either +P or +P+ I load to duplicate them. Therefore I use a lot of HS-6, Longshot and AAC#7 today.