Those rare Valet razors

Update on my experience with the Valet razor and various blades:

Gem Blue Star, slotted and notched to fit: acceptable.
Valet blade, fresh out of the wrapper: bad.
Valet blade stropped 15 times, and then another 25 times, still bad.
Feather blade, fresh out of the wrapper, good.
Valet blade, honed with 3M micro abrasive paper with a home made honing guide, 5 micron and then 1 micron: acceptable.
Valet blade, further honed with 3M 0.3 micron paper, still only acceptable.

Note that my regular razor is a classic Gillette DE razor with any good blade, much less aggressive than the Valet. In that razor, a Feather DE blade is outstanding. By the same standard the Feather SE blade in the Valet razor is only good.

I guess the upshot is that Valet blades are usable only if honed, but not otherwise. I have yet to try stropping the honed Valet blade.

marty39 said:

Update on my experience with the Valet razor and various blades:

Gem Blue Star, slotted and notched to fit: acceptable.
Valet blade, fresh out of the wrapper: bad.
Valet blade stropped 15 times, and then another 25 times, still bad.
Feather blade, fresh out of the wrapper, good.
Valet blade, honed with 3M micro abrasive paper with a home made honing guide, 5 micron and then 1 micron: acceptable.
Valet blade, further honed with 3M 0.3 micron paper, still only acceptable.

Note that my regular razor is a classic Gillette DE razor with any good blade, much less aggressive than the Valet. In that razor, a Feather DE blade is outstanding. By the same standard the Feather SE blade in the Valet razor is only good.

I guess the upshot is that Valet blades are usable only if honed, but not otherwise. I have yet to try stropping the honed Valet blade.

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Interesting experiment, thanks for sharing. I have to say that I find feather rough so that's why I'm not a huge fan of the valet. The blade and razor is very cool but the shave itself does not seem to be for me. That's unfortunate I think.

After a strange malfunction with Valet #1 I bought another valet off eBay that I received yesterday. Valet #1 blade stoppers broke when I tried to lock a despined GEM blade.

Valet #2 (made in England) was all right and took the blade no issues. Aggressive? Yes, BBS, yes! Better than Feather? Yes! I don't know if I will use this one on a regular basis but it was a good shave! I still feel like a second of inattention and I will nick myself. I never have that feeling with the 1912, Contour, PushButton, G-Bar or Injector.

I use an English made Valet often , it's a VC3 open comb with the little ears to hold the blade in situ, I also have one of each of the other types apart from the very first version...I can't get on with the Feathers or de-spined GEM's however I've found the blued steel versions of the original Valet blades to give a decent shave when well stropped, in fact the last blade I used I got at least 30 shaves out of it...I've since honed it but have yet to re strop and use it so it may well give more service yet?

Luc said:

After a strange malfunction with Valet #1 I bought another valet off eBay that I received yesterday. Valet #1 blade stoppers broke when I tried to lock a despined GEM blade.

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Was that the one I sent you, Luc? Sorry to hear about it. Blade stoppers seem to be the bane of SE razors, and it is sad to think that breaking such a small part can make a razor useless.

mblakele said:

Was that the one I sent you, Luc? Sorry to hear about it. Blade stoppers seem to be the bane of SE razors, and it is sad to think that breaking such a small part can make a razor useless.

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Unfortunately yes. Don't worry about it, considering how old the razor was, I reckon it was due. Specially if you push a sharp blade into the stopper each time you change the blade, eventually, the edge must dig inside the stopper.