I just ran across this thread today.
I worked with Tom Teesdale from fall of 1983 to 1989. In fact I remember him building the original prototype frame that Gary inspected to approve Tom as one of his first builders. Tom built all the different seat cluster arrangements and also introduced the wrap around stays on some Mt Tam specials for Gary. These stay end were silver brazed over the bronze fillets. Something Tom liked to do to show off his skill with a torch. Some prototypes Tom build this way and did a final run later toward the end of the Mt. Tams. At the time Everests and Tams were built side by side, the only difference was the fillet size. Finish was pretty much the same as all of them done by hand. I had the callouses to prove it then. By 1985 I was brazing as many frames as Tom did in the factory. We had dual stands side by side and we'd braze up a batch of frames in 1-2 days. Then spend the next week finishing the fillets and installing the braze-ons and alignments. During peak months batches of 35 were shipped to Fisher finished ready for paint.
As for the TT or TET stampings. originally we built for Gary for at least a year before we started to stamp the BB shells. This was due to Tom being worried about being asked to replace damaged or broken frames from "other" builders. Gary was always elusive about who was building for him besides us and wouldn't release names but I remember at least once a frame sent back for repair that we hadn't built. Tom started stamping TT and then later TET probably by mid to late 1985. Gary was furious at first, then later caved and finally told the public who was building some of his top end frames a year or two later.
I remember building Everests, Mt. Tams, Competitions all in batches of 10-35. Sometimes 2-3 dIfferent sizes at once. In 1985/86 Teesdale started to offer to paint the frames as Gary was having trouble getting CycleArt and others to paint them quick enough. I painted a number of the Grey and Teal frame-sets for 6 months. Tom then took over and did them on the weekends and in his "off" hours. Cathy his wife started painting most of the Teesdale production after that.
During this time we also free lanced work for Salsa stems, Santana and later Marin and Kona. Alongside our road frames for Terry cycles and Tri frames for Quintana Roo. I remember building a batch of MTB Fisher tandems too. I bought a set of tubing from Gary and built my sister her wedding present which was a custom Fisher MTB Tandem in 1987. I believe the tubing was sourced from Santana. We also built a good number of road tandems for Santana when they're productiong couldn't keep up.
Thats much what I remember, it's been 35 years ago. Back then we were mostly concerned to keeping the doors open making high quality frames quickly and getting paid for them. The MTB boom was in full swing we just were tying to get as many frames to Gary as we could. Not worrying about documenting the details for posterity.
Regards,
Frank Haas
White Salmon, WA USA
Last edited by fhaas; 01-29-22 at 04:19 PM.
Reason: mis-spellings