Matt (Longboard:Source): First off, lets get the relationship between the Lush and Sabre brands cleared up. A lot of people are asking if they are one in the same. Can you clear up all the rumors for us?

Rich (Sabre Trucks): Sabre is a side project of mine. They are two completely separate brands with input from different people, and don’t really have much to do with each other apart from my involvement in both of them. Lush also uses Sabre trucks and bushings on its more expensive completes, alongside other trucks.

Matt: There are a lot of cast, longboard trucks in the same price range at the moment: Holey, Paris, Randal, Grizzly…where do the Sabres differ from these?

Rich: The Sabre truck comes from something I’ve been asked for frequently over the last few years: a more stable, affordable truck, better suited to a bit of speed, but still able to carve around. At the time of initial development, the only readily available cast, reverse kingpin trucks out there (Holeys, Randal 50’s and Paris) had steep, carve orientated 50 degree baseplates, which a lot of skaters found a bit twitchy at higher speed. The Sabre baseplate is 45 degrees, slightly steeper than the new Randal 42’s, but still a bit slacker than most carve trucks out there. This is really the best way to adjust how stable a truck is. Changing bushing hardness and altering rake/castor doesn’t really have the same effect. 45 degrees is nicely in the middle.

Right now, the Sabre is also the only readily available, affordable reverse kingpin truck with a wider hanger (though I understand that there are several other companies out there developing similar widths). A wide hanger width slows the truck response down, and whilst it would be technically incorrect to say it makes it more stable, it does make things a bit more steady at speed. The primary reason for extra hanger width though, is cornering and drifting. A wider hanger gives more grip (as your wheels are closer to your horizontal weight distribution), and it also makes a drift, when it happens, slightly more predictable, and blurs the transition between grip and drift a little. However, like all these things, there’s a balance to be struck – too much hanger width makes a truck feel dead and unresponsive – and who wants to skate a board that doesn’t turn well?

There’s a few other things that we wanted to see in a truck that weren’t out there in the market place when we started development, including double barrel bushings as standard, a slightly different take on hanger/baseplate/bushing/kingpin interaction, and well, we just wanted them to look cool and different.

Matt: Although the truck works great for downhill, you decided not to go down the CNC, split axle, flat rake route. What was the thinking behind that decision?

Rich: Bluntly – we were trying to make a truck that does everything, not just downhill. This means that we do have a compromise truck, but that’s ok because we’re not trying to out race Magun or Munkae anyway. The main issues are the casting process itself, and the price point were are trying to hit – whilst it is possible to cast a split or precision axle into a truck, we would have ended up with trucks that cost almost as much as a CNC truck to make, thus negating the whole point of it as an affordable bit of kit.

The rake/flat axle debate is another matter though. At the time of initial development, we were all skating Holeys (which have no rake) and Randals (which do have some rake). To start with, we wanted to make a truck that had a flippable hanger, to give more versatility. However, after several prototypes, we eventually decided that having a flippable hanger a) didn’t really provide a positive effect and b) meant that we had to compromise other areas of the truck’s design. It is possible to flip the hanger on a Sabre truck – but all that happens is you lose grip and leverage, making the truck feel dead and corner like crap. I’m sure some people will try it and love it though! Rake generally makes the truck feel livelier without really compromising stability. Flat rake trucks also tend to feel a bit dead when dropped through, and as a lot of people use drop through decks for going fast it made sense to go with a good amount of rake.

Matt: A lot of people who have been riding the trucks have been raving about the bushings. What is so special about them and what are the different duros designed for?

Rich: One of the big things with the Sabre brand was that we wanted to make a truck that came with the best bushings available, fitted as standard. We figured that most serious skaters upgrade bushings pretty much straight away anyway, so why not just give them the best straight out of the box? We also wanted to make sure that the bushings were cross compatible with as many different trucks as possible, so that skaters could use other bushings in the Sabre if they wanted, and so that the Sabre bushings themselves were a viable aftermarket upgrade for other trucks. Everyone who’s been skating for long enough knows that bushings are super important in a truck, but it’s often overlooked by truck manufacturers as an essential part of the whole system.

There are two things to Sabre bushings that, as far as I know, are relatively unique. Firstly, they are top and bottom switchable. All bushings are the same height, which means that you can mix and match hardness within a single truck very easily, allowing for a great degree of fine tuning. Other bushing companies offer a huge range of hardness in their bushings, but we just thought about it a little more and have made a system that offers a wide range of combinations without having so much choice that things get confusing for skaters and the shops that supply them.

The second thing we’ve done is paid a huge amount of attention to the bushing compound. Firstly was a choice of urethane. Something very interesting we discovered early on was that the urethane you use in wheels is actually not very good for bushings, certainly not when compared to the custom formulas we’re working with.  Actually this makes quite a lot of sense when you think about it. As a skater, you’re asking entirely different things from wheels and bushings, so why make them out of the same material? Each of our durometers is actually a different compound, specifically engineered to deliver maximum results at that durometer. Urethane is funny stuff, a certain compound might be perfect at 88a, but out performed at 90a. So we spent a lot of time working with our chemists to get exactly the right mixes, rather than just choosing an off-the-shelf chemical, we custom specked urethanes throughout the bushing range. I’m pretty sure that no one else does this, certainly no truck manufacturers do.

Matt: …so the bushings evolved at the same time as the truck design?

Rich: Yes, exactly. We had a unique opportunity to try some new ideas out relating to the way the bushing interacts with the truck as it turns. A Sabre bushing is captured by the hanger, but not the baseplate,  which means is that the bushing is free to move laterally against the kingpin – rather than just compressing it up and down as the truck is turned, it’s also being stretched sideways. This makes for a crazy good return to centre, as the bushing is able to “fight back” in two dimensions rather than just one as in most trucks. The truck relies on friction between the bushing and the baseplate to restrict the turn, rather than actually restricting the bushing itself – which is why brand new Sabres are ridiculously turny, as the mould release on the bushing hasn’t been worn off yet, the bushing is too slippery against the baseplate. This only lasts for a few turns though. As soon as the mould release is gone, the truck performs as it was intended. By building this system from the ground up, we’ve not only maximized bushing performance with the truck design, but also maximize the truck performance with the bushing design. As far as I know this is a unique approach amongst any truck development, be hey CNC or cast.

Matt: Ok… What’s with the bushing naming system? Why not just have durometers like everyone else?

We just wanted to communicate how much thought has gone into each bushing, there’s way more to each one than just a durometer. So we’ve named each one according to its purpose. The X-type is extra turny. Notice the conical shape rather than a standard barrel. The F-type is a standard barrel for carving and a bit of speed, and the R-type is a slightly harder compound with a slower response for going fast and racing on, hence the R.

Matt: Where do you start with designing a brand new truck from scratch? How did you develop it and how did you go about testing and prototyping?

Rich: Haha… I can’t believe how long it’s taken to get done, out of all the product development trails I’ve been involved in, this one definitely takes the “most protracted” title! We started off by figuring out what we broadly wanted the truck to skate like and do. It’s important to my mind that a product like this fills a specific purpose and need. It was then a case of trying out lots of other trucks and bushings and working out what each truck characteristic did to the ride, then combining all those things together in a geometry. It became apparent to us pretty early on that bushing shape and compound and the way that they interacted with the truck was really important, so that got a lot of attention. Most of our “testing” just involved going skating,  really…

Once we had a basic geometry we liked (rake, angle, width etc), we were able to get the truck styled. We worked with a designer who specializes in making parts for nuclear reactors, so she was able to do a load of cool stuff with finite stress analysis and strength testing to make the truck nice and light whilst still making it very strong – as it needs to be with such a wide hanger. She’s also pretty handy with 3D sculpture and design, and we came up with the look of the truck together using various external styling cues. It was then ‘just’ a case of getting a series of CNC prototypes done and tweaking things like the baseplate drop-through and tool compatibility, pivot cup sizing, kingpin fitment, until we had a design that we were happy with. There is so much design and thought going on in that truck now! Once we thought we had the design finalized we gave the factory (who we also spent a good deal of time finding… not everyone has the same quality standards, service  and work ethic as our guys) the 3d drawings so that they could make the casting tooling, then a couple of other small changes and viola, production samples. The whole process took about two years from “let’s do this” to holding a production one in my hand.

Matt: From what we hear, they have been a great success…how do they ride? What do you guys have them set up on?

I have been skating them in various incarnations for as long as there have been prototypes, and it’s been quite interesting feeling the different changes we’ve made come out in the ride of them. I have them on all my longboards now – which currently consists of all Lush boards – a Samba, a Kisiwa, a Revolution, and a prototype XL “Revelation” speedboard. I really like them – they are perfect for the skating I love, which is big open carvy bomby hills that last for ages. They’re certainly good at race speed- not sure about breaking world speed records but then that’s not their intended purpose. They’re good for the short, steep slidey stuff we have here, too. Some of the other guys round here have them set up on Comet boards like the FSM, Pagan and Voodoo, they seem to work well with the rocker that Comet put in their decks. A couple of people also have them set up as a combo truck with Randal baseplate or hangers, as the two trucks are compatible with a bit of attention.

Matt: What is next for Sabre? Might we see something similar in other hanger widths…Sabres specked on other brands…a larger range of bushings?

Rich: More bushings for sure!! Though we’re probably going to keep the bushing range pretty tight in the long run to stop it getting mega confusing and out of control. Sabre trucks on other longboard brands – we’ve talked to a few people about it now, who knows what will happen. It’s slightly more specialized than a Randal or Paris, so it will be interesting to see where that goes. As for more hanger widths and baseplate angles, well let’s just say there are many ideas in the pipeline, but as you can probably see from all I’ve said above about what went into making this stuff, we don’t like to rush things! It’s probably going to be a long time before anything new appears because we want to make sure we get it right. I would rather see a select range of products designed and produced properly than a huge range of less well thought out stuff. I know everyone likes a choice, but there are other brands doing that and it’s just more satisfying to do things properly.

Matt: Sounds exciting. Lets see what you come up with! Thanks for taking the time…

Rich: Thanks for having me!