What about green dot?

[donhuff]

Is green dot close enough to unique that I could use in in place of unique? Seems like everybody there had several jugs of it. I know that it is just one tic faster than unique on the charts, and they dont even put much In between the two. And I don't mean an exact grain for grain substitute, since I don't really load unique up to the max either. Usually I'm way down from the top loads with it. Like 9.0 in 44 mag, 9.5 in 45 colt.

[donhuff]

Well,I think that I should have researched it a little more before making that first post. Looks more like green dot is a good bit faster than unique. Im now thinking that 20/28 is next to it on the faster side, and power pistol is next to it on the slower side. Universal clays is suppose to be an almost exact replacement until you get to the max pressure range. Then it gets a little erratic.

[runfiverun]

green-dot is a little faster than unique it however is a good powder for many applications.
it is just one of those overlooked powders like herco is.

[donhuff]

Tell me about it. There are so many different powders out there now that it's beginning to get out of hand.
I want to try them all but so many of them overlap each other. I did get a lb of red dot cause I read so much about it, but i think that my bullseye and hp38 would actually cover what it does. I also got a lb of IMR SR4759, cause I read about what a good reducer rifle powder it is.BUT I STILL WANT UNIQUE!!! I got some power pistol to try and fill in that empty spot in my sole that unique seems to fill so well. It's a shade slower than unique but just a little. I have use it before but only in some auto pistol loads.

I got into a discussion with a vendor at the gun show about powders, while I was hunting some unique. He was telling me how Varget was old technology and needed to be discontinued . He was maybe 27-28 years old, and his buddy was telling him to shut up cause I probably knew more about it than he did since I'm 60. I drew my hand back like I was going to slap his cheek like a child deserves for talking like that. Then his buddy told him that there are two of them and only one of you (my 36 year old son was with me) and I'm not gonna help you! LOL This was while telling me that green dot was SLOWER than unique too. I was waiting for him to start bad mouthing unique, and that would have been the last straw. We talked a little more and when we started to leave, he shook my hand and said it was nice talking to someone who actually knew something about reloading.

[donhuff]

Well I got off subject as usual.

I know, there are a lot of powders that get overlooked. Like green dot and herco. I've seen them talked about ever since I started reloading around 1973. But I just have never tried them. Herco looks like an ever so little bit slower unique, but I never pay it any attention.

I have read where one fellow said, that green dot was actually red dot, that was a little to slow to qualify for that speed slot in burning rate. And they add the colored dots later,after burn rate testing and determine the speed of each batch. It kinda sounds plausible but I would hope that they could control the outcome closer than that. Maybe that's how it started out long time ago. But that would mean that somebody went to sleep while adding the graphite/retardant to a batch, and WHA LAH blue dot was invented