[Nick_C_S]

I cut my loading teeth on Blue Dot many years ago - 1984, to be exact. It's a good thing it's a forgiving powder, because I loaded with more bravery than common sense back then. I don't use it any more. Sometime early on, I moved away from Hercules (it's Alliant now) powders and into Winchester.

At any rate, Blue Dot is good powder for heavier bullets in 357 Magnum; lighter bullets, not so much (I had this opinion before reading the warning). It is much better served, however, if the gun has a longer barrel - preferably 6" or more. Below that, and it gets to being pretty flashy and velocity suffers. Slower powders like longer barrels.

I am admittedly a fast-powder-centric loader. HS-6 is the slowest powder I use now days. HS-6 is considerably faster than Blue Dot. I load with more W231 and AA2 than any others. I frequently recommend faster powders than others do in various posts here on TFL. Most people use powders too slow for the application. There's far more to selecting the correct powder for an application than looking at a load manual and selecting the one that shows the highest velocity.

For some reason, there's a lot of Blue Dot running around out there right now. With all the shortages, we buy what's available, I guess.