Valet VC4

pjgh

pjgh

Joined
Thursday September 26, 2013
Location
Halifax, Republic of Yorkshire
How could I resist? Slightly blurred auction pictures, a bit of a dog and a low price ... it'll polish up ... surely ...

Upon arrival it was worse than I expected and worse than I could see in the pictures. It had what appeared to be dramatic plate loss all over; that, or some kind of varnish or lacquer that had significantly degraded.

Content with just giving this lame dog a quick spruce up and some single edge loving here after, I gave it a quick go over with my usual routine: De-Solv-It Metal Cleaner, Peek Polish and a yellow duster.

Well, I so with I'd take some "befores". So wish! You'll have to imagine from the auction pictures:

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You can see the areas that I thought were plate loss or some degraded varnish ...

Well, blow me down! It all started coming off! Well, I had to carry on, didn't I?

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So now I have either (a) a bare metal razor, or (b) a delaminated razor with perfect plating. I think the former. Concur?

If I enjoy the shave, which I have with its open comb VC3 sibling, I'll get it plated.
 
Thanks, chaps!

I've since had a few sessions with the kitchen foil, soda bicarb and salt, a method which has further cleaned up this razor and a few others.

For blades, the GEM blades (de-spined and the corners snipped off) will only fit into the VB1/VC1 model. The VC2/3/4 required the Feather single edge blades and even then, there are "some" variants which will not take the blades due to one of the pins or posts being in just the wrong place. If you have one of these, simply remove the offending pin.

I have a small stash of NOS Valet blades in good, sharp order, so have yet to buy some Feather blades. I think I will do shortly and hopefully be able to start to build a list of known good razors - it might be that the British models are all okay, might be that the earlier ones or the US ones are good. We'll see ...
 
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