Does anyone have a picture and dimensions for a strop for a Valet AutoStrop Razor? I picked up a beautiful Valet a couple weeks ago at a flea market and I want to find some blades and strop for it, but I figured it would be easier to probably make the strop. Is there a certain thickness it needs to be? length? material? or anything else I need to know? Any info would be appreciated. Thanks.
When I've tried to use these to strop modern stainless blades, I've just ended up spoiling the blades. I gather this is a common experience. They may work better with the old carbon steel vintage blades, but then you might need to hone those first. Keep in mind, though, that I don't claim any expertise on things to do with stropping and honing. It's certainly fun to see the stropping mechanism in action, and you may do better than I did. That said, here you go, with a picture of the two strops I have. The shorter one is from a boxed Auto-Strop set. The ruler went askew in the picture, but the width is exactly 1.5 inches, and I'd think that would be the most critical thing. Thickness just under 1/16 of an inch. Material, some sort of leather, but it's not marked what kind. Someone else could advise you better on strop materials anyway.
I plan on ordering some of the Feathers from razorbladesandmore at some point. I really want to see this thing in action, I love how mechanical these are. Who knows, maybe I will come across some NOS blades for the strop at somepoint.
It can happen. I had a NOS blade. However, as neat as the mechanism is, I never found it to be that useful. I have an ever-ready stropping handle that can strop any SE blade in a similar fashion. However, I felt like I get more out of hand stropping then using the stropping handle. Carbon or stainless, it didn't make a big difference. As mentioned, the feather SE blades don't seam to do well on the strop either. Maybe just 2-3 passes, would be enough without over doing int.
