Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles 6X6.8 Blue Dot?

I bought 3 pounds of Blue Dot not that long ago. Shot in a 444, 45 LC, 223, and a 45/70 I am almost out. Sure seems to burn up quick even with the light charges.

OR:

you've just shot a lot of rounds down range. The 444 and 45/70, you're using how many grains per charge?

For sage rats, in the 223, if I run 55 grain bullets my charge is 12.5 grains. Divide that into 7000 grains for a pound, and that will yield over 550 rounds per pound...or 1650 rounds for 3 pounds. I single shot my 223s in the varmint fields, so that is a fair amount of trigger pulling, and a fair amount of dead sage rats.

When I go down to a 10 grain charge with a 40 grain plastic tip bullet, that is 700 rounds per pound, or 2100 rounds for three pounds of Blue Dot.

You must shoot a lot more than I do, and a lot of folks think I shoot a lot...except our mutual buddy on Prince of Wales Island...in Buttfudk Alaska.

Mostly the 444 and 45-70 were getting charges in the mid teens under cast bullets. The 45 Colt which I shoot a lot of out of a Rossi carbine and a Ruger Vaquero got 14 grains. This absolutely ran down my lead supply and my LR/LP primer supply. Why now most of my shooting is done with rounds that use small rifle primers. Yep I did a lot of shooting and so did my Grandson. He did learn to load shells and cast bullets. All good. I will say my 45-70 loads using Blue Dot were not entirely satisfactory as for consistency but were plenty fun to watch the kids shoot up.

Seafire, Is this the basic formula to establish load guidelines for Blue Dot regardless of cartridge?

Thanks.

Frank

There is no substitute for empirical experience. I don't care what field of life we are talking about.,

for most cases, yeah...

Blue Dot's formula does like short fat cases, better than longer thin ones...

but another formula I pass on ( but still work up)... for a 308 based case, 22.5 grains is max, regardless of caliber, and just work up slower if you are using one of the heavier for caliber bullets. 26 grains is max for a 30/06 based case., same rule of thumb, just work up with some of the heavier bullets for caliber.

in a 7 x 57 based case... 8x57, 6.5 x 57 ( or 6.5 x 55), 6mm Rem and 257 Roberts, MAX charge is 24 grains of Blue Dot.
Blue Dot will make rifle barrels still pretty darn good hunting accuracy, even if they are shot out or close to it.. Will save most of older guys having to rebarrel ol Betsy, when we only have a 5 or 10 yr window of deer hunting left in our lives.

Same with old SR 4759 if ya got any or can find any...

Or if you are in that boat, just consult cast bullet manuals.. you can use that same data, with jacketed bullets, because your pressures are WAY under SAAMI specs, and they will still give minute of deer out to 200 yds or so for quite a while on an otherwise shot out barrel.

another side note, those will recoil less, and slowing down fragile bullets some, or regular SP bullets, at lower speeds they will penetrate further on a game animal also..... Kinda the same thing, of why a 350 Legend will drop game animals that seem to be out of its weight class ..and most people are thinking Winchester reinvented the wheel...

Kinda why my philosophy is to let the rifle barrel tells me what it likes and what it will do with something, vs the folks that take a reload manual as a Bible, and think variating from that is blasphemy. Reload manuals are a recommendation, not a Bible...Few folks get that... Thinking outside the box isn't as common as people think it is...especially in today's world.