Originally Posted by SuperKirby

When I ordered my SMI barrel, Ron said they use a 1:32 twist that works great with the .458 325 gr. FTX with Harvester smooth black sabots. I can get a .458 FTX down the barrel, but it takes everything I have to get it there. I would hate to have to reload in a hurry in the field. I figure I might get a pack of .458 sabots and see if that makes a difference, but I'm not getting my hopes up too high.
So now I'm looking for a new bullet to try. I thought I had more than I do, but I'm about out of bullets in general, so I don't have a lot to experiment with, and I don't want to start randomly buying bullets to find out they don't work well with this twist rate. I looked at the calculators that use the greenhill formula, and they work off caliber and length. Here's my question - when figuring caliber, do you figure the caliber of the bullet itself or the bullet/sabot together? If I figure a .45 bullet, it looks like I want a bullet 1.09". In a .50 I should look for something 1.34".
Any recommendations for a bullet?