1960's era Speakman-Kent Shower Valves

This is what I was faced with. The hot water valve kept dripping.

I had a bit of trouble getting the right information, but now that I have it, I wanted to share it. If you have Speakman Kent Shower Valves and you want to try replacing them, or replacing a washer (like I had to), you may find this information helpful.

Apparently, almost every shower valve is removed by using a special "bonnet wrench" that turns a six-sided nut type thing (which is actually part of the valve itself) deep inside your shower wall. Well, the Speakman-Kent valves in our house didn't have any any-number-of-sided flat areas inside or outside the wall to attach a wrench to. Everywhere I looked on the internet people were telling me that they were there, I just had to look harder or open the wall a bit more. They were all wrong.

The valve with handle removed. The nut-type thing you see there is the packing nut.

See? No bonnet nut deep in the wall. Just black pipe in there.

Another angle - no bonnet nut. And they wanted me to rip open the walls...

I went to the locally owned hardware store and the nice older guy there told me that the valve just backs out by unscrewing it, as if you were turning the water on and on and infinitely on, once you have removed the packing nut. He suggested putting the handle back on and unscrewing, which I had tried before to no avail. But my previous attempts had been a bit half-hearted, since I wasn't sure it what I was doing was right.

Once I got the "hardware store old guy" seal of approval, I put the handle back on, put on my gloves for extra grip, and lo and behold, the valve kept on turning and came right out. I was able to flip the washer over to re-use it, and then screwed the sucker back in, replaced the packing and packing nut, and I was back in business.

Anyway, in case you're searching for help on removing Speakman-Kent shower valves from the mid-60's (or possibly other eras), I hope you'll find this information useful.