Alliant Blue Dot Powder

I use a lot of fast-burning powder for my normal practice and competition ammo, but I couldn’t use the usual Hogdon TiteGroup for a Gold Dot replica load, because the pressure would be too high.

Blue Dot is a relatively coarse powder, whose granules resemble little disks about two millimeters in diameter. It seems to meter fairly well in my Hornady Lock-N-Load measure, with accuracy and consistency similar to Titegroup.

Although felt recoil and muzzle flip is quite mild, even with the fairly hot loads I use it for, the “boom” and fireball at the muzzle are very noticeable.

I consider Blue Dot to be a very clean powder. I have not seen unburned powder anywhere, and the powder residue is not very hard to remove. This seems sort of unusual, because I’m completely filling the case with powder. You’d think that there would be more junk left behind.

I am happy with this powder, and will probably continue to use it to make replicas of self defense pistol loads. It can’t be used to load 9mm to major, but outside of USPSA Open class, almost no one loads to that power level anyway. Hogdon HS-6, which I bought for 9mm major loads, leaves unburned powder behind. To get as much power as you get from HS-6 without the mess, you’d have to step up to the more expensive VV powders, or deal with even more noise.