Gold Dot Brass vrs. Gold Dot Aluminum?

U

usaz

New member
My local gun shop has Blazer aluminum cased .44 special rounds for $38 per 50. They look to be loaded with 200 gr. Gold Dot bullets.

The Gold Dot labeled defensive cartridges run around $40 per 20 round box.

My question is, are the aluminum cased Blazer's equivalent (for defensive use) to the brass cased Gold Dots? Is the powder, primer, and FPS the same?
 
The only difference is in the casings itself. The Speer Gold Dot's are reloadable where the CCI's Blazers are not. Federal own's both CCI and Speer so it makes sense.

Midway lists indentical stats for each load

Muzzle Velocity: 875 fps
Muzzle Energy: 340 ft. lbs.


http://www.midwayusa.com/product/62...ial-200-grain-jacketed-hollow-point-box-of-20

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/13...00-grain-speer-gold-dot-jacketed-hollow-point

Even if you reload its almost worth it to go with the Blazers when you get 30 extra rounds for the same price
 
Both Blazer and Speer use the same 200gr Gold Dot bullet in their .44 Special loadings, but the rest of the composition is certainly different. I know for a fact that the same primers are not used because Speer brass-case ammo uses boxer primers while Blazer aluminum-case ammo uses berdan primers (this is one of the reasons that it's advertised as non-reloadable). I also suspect that the powder charge and/or type of powder is different because the Speer version is advertised at 875fps from a 6" barrel while the Blazer version is advertised at 920fps from a 5.15" barrel.

The above being said, I would not hesitate to use the Blazer aluminum-case .44 Special loading as a self-defense load. I have never experienced a problem with the reliability of Blazer aluminum and its berdan primers. Also, I very much doubt that the slight bump in velocity will adversely affect the performance of the bullet since Speer also uses the same slug in their "Short Barrel" .44 Magnum Gold Dot loading at higher velocity still.
 
Weblymkv,
Where are you getting the stat's that you're talking about? Now I have two posts that are contradictory. I'm not worried about the primer's or aluminum cases but am interested in the end result (ballistics). Do the Blazer's hit as hard as the defensive marketed Speer's?
 
I've shot a lot of Blazer aluminum and like it for a target/practice load. However, it has been my experience that aluminum cased ammo is much more likely to setback or jump crimp. I've seen easily visible setback result from a single chambering in an autopistol.
 
the gold dot is nothing but a standard plated bullet, heavy copper jacket plated onto a lead slug, that is then treated to a handful of complex shape and swage processes. The basic plated slugs that become speer total metal jacket bullets in some cases are sent to different machinery and become gold dots.

This was a brilliant process, IMO. the whole thing, from design to marketing, was world class business.

To your point, I am going to go on record here saying that your 80 cent blazers and the $2 gold dots are 99.99% certain to have identical bullets. If they are both from similar production dates, they are almost certain to be the same production lot of bullets. The velocities will be almost identical. You will be shooting ammunition that for all practical purposes will function on target identically.

Bullets intended for magnum loads would have been made with harder cores, and the jackets would be plated to heavier thicknesses. These bullets are made by electroplating; precision slugs are formed and then plated, and when the precisely measured slugs are measured and found to be the proper size, the jacket has been plated on to the proper thickness.

Commercially, it would make absolutely no sense to make "good" and "bad" bullets to load in "gold dot" and "blazer" ammo. Speer works on a zero inventory principle. as runs of one caliber of ammo are planned, they run lots of bullets just for that purpose. They would, most likely, schedule several SKUs of .44 ammunition in a certain block of time. they would run hundreds of thousands if not millions of bullets, in all weights. A certain amount would be shunted off and packaged for sale. A certain amount would be shunted off for loading into aluminum, and a certain amount would be sorted out for brass. All identical. Different facilities would immediately start loading both brass and aluminum variants, and as soon as that stuff is taped into the cases, it is shipped to the distributors.

This is how cars and a lot of other consumer goods are made. A truck load of seats or fenders arrives at the dock, they are unloaded to the work floor, and that seat or fender leaves the factory within 24 hours, stuck in a brand new car.
 
You can reload Berdan-primed cases (although it is time-consuming and a pain in the butt). But you cannot reload aluminum or steel cases, as they expand but do not rebound like brass.
 
Weblymkv,
Where are you getting the stat's that you're talking about? Now I have two posts that are contradictory. I'm not worried about the primer's or aluminum cases but am interested in the end result (ballistics). Do the Blazer's hit as hard as the defensive marketed Speer's?
Click to expand...

The numbers I quoted were taken directly from the manufacturer's websites.

http://www.speer-ammo.com/ballistics/detail.aspx?loadNo=23980

http://www.speer-ammo.com/ballistics/detail.aspx?loadNo=23971

http://www.blazer-ammo.com/blazer_chart.aspx
 
$38.00 for a 50 rd. box of Al. Blazer? Shop somewhere else if you can. That's a little too much profit margin for me. They're both very good rounds. I used to buy the Al. cased boxes for $15.00 a box when they first hit the stores. I have had no problems whatsoever with either round. The factory loads will produce about 825 to 850 fps from all of my 3 in. snub guns. The Gold Dot 200 gr. bullet WILL expand at 800 fps. I have tested a lot of them and it is my preferred carry round. I pulled some of them down and reloaded them with 2400, Red Dot, and Unique and found some great loads that won't stress a Charter Bulldog (or my wrists).
 
IMO, cases made for Berdan primers have less potential for a failure to ignite the powder.

The higher dollar ammo MAY?? use a different powder that produces less recoil and/or less muzzle flash. You may want to fire both in a controlled range under very low light to see if there is any advantage regarding muzzle flash.
 
The higher dollar ammo MAY?? use a different powder that produces less recoil and/or less muzzle flash. You may want to fire both in a controlled range under very low light to see if there is any advantage regarding muzzle flash.
Click to expand...

Always possible. many brands may use identical bulk lot powders when loading identical rounds. There are figuratively speaking train car loads of powder shipped and used at federal, remington, and others to load identical 115 grain 9m generic rounds. It's conceivable that you could open various rounds and find identical loads.


When comparing that generic round to that same company's better line of hollow point (especially when migrating to a brass case from aluminum) there is a possibility that they would formulate an entirely different load with different powder, but it's not an absolute certainty, or even likely.

Every manufacturer is going to try to minimize complications. If speer could buy a single powder to load every handgun cartridge that they make, you bet they would. They will buy the absolute minimum numbers of component's possible, and tweak everything possible to avoid having 20 or more numbers of propellant in their process.

A person can hypothetically load practically every handgun made with bullseye. a handgun loader could hypothetically create top quality loads with nothing but 296, bullseye, and one or two mid range loads that can do high velocity auto or revolver loads, such as hs6 or accurate 5.

A factory will do the same, as far as it is possible. The only exception you will be likely to see is that when lots are made of certain $2 apiece rounds, the ultimate items, there may be carefully selected powders specific to them that aren't just the generic stuff that they put into everything else.
 
The powder I saw in all of the Blazer rounds I broke down looked just like 296, but the charge was so small I am sure it's not 296. It's probably some non canister grade propellant they bought a boxcar load of. Whatever they're using it's a great load. Flash in low light is not too bad but from a 3 in. snub you're going to see some of it. Recoil feels like a big .38 Spl. Everyone I hand mine to loves it after a few cylinders.
 
Blc-2 was in production for what, a couple centuries, and was supposed to have been used in loading most of the 7.62 nato. It was sold by hodgdon by the train car load, usually at a sharp discount compared to name brand powders, because it was a genuine "surplus" powder. You had a factory running non stop producing it, and if they over ran the current contracts, the stuff was sold off as "surplus" to people like hodgdons.

This is how Accurate powders got their start. Selling powders that were supplied to military production, buying and packaging bulk lots under their own label.
 
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