Valet AutoStrop Help!

[Kyle1981]

Hey everyone,

Im new here but am excited to get acquainted!

My Brother and I recently converted our Brother in Law to Wet Shaving. He purchased a Valet AutoStrop safety razor from an antique store. He is having a tough time finding blades that will work. Is he limited to finding Valet blades or are there any other types of blades that will work in this single edge razor?

Thanks for the help!!!

 

[Aptivus]

Try the feather blade. From my understanding it should work.

 

[Slash McCoy]

Try the Feather SE blades. www.razorbladesandmore.com is one site that sells them. The Feathers are, as you would expect, very sharp. Depending on what model of VA you have, you may also be able to modify a GEM type SE blade to work. That won't work on the style of autostrop that has the "VALET" cutout and the lugs that go through the same cutout in the blade. The older razors don't use the cutout. The cutout was an "improvement" that prevented anyone else from making blades to fit the razor without patent infringement. There are also considerable stocks of NOS autostrop blades. One advantage of the NOS blades is that you can strop them as originally intended, by threading the strop through the razor and running it up and down the strop. You could even apply some .5u diamond paste to a strop and keep those NOS blades going forever, practically.

 

[Kyle1981]

Thanks for the responses guys! Ill have him check out the feather SE blades to see if they will work. His model does have the cut out VALET with the lugs in between.

 

[BladeDE40]

Depending on the model you can also use a regular single edge blade by removing the spine.

 

[Chester]

Thanks for the responses guys! Ill have him check out the feather SE blades to see if they will work. His model does have the cut out VALET with the lugs in between.

The feather blades will work for all of the VAS models.
-- Chet

 

[mvk]

I have a valet that the feather blades do not work on. There was another thread here that explained which models can use the feathers and which cannot. I really like the valets so I bought nos blades and a new miller kangaroo strop. I now have a model that the feathers work with also. I like both.