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Nancy Boy shaving cream, Gillette Super Speed DE razor, tiny shaving brush.

Shavegeeks tend to romanticize the past, and I'm as guilty of it as anyone. I talk about safety razors like they're some pure manifestation of The Greatest Generation, used by JFK, Cary Grant, and Lee Marvin, back when men were men and shaved like men, even though the women probably had legs that felt more like Brokeback Mountain than smooth'n'silky.

But the more I delve into shaving's past, the more I see that the times, they've never really a'changed much. Witness this 1948 magazine advertisement for the then-new Schick/Eversharp Injector safety razor, and its absurd claim that each and every blade was "stroned!"

Stroned?

That is to say, stropped and honed, like a straight razor's edge -- honed on a whetstone, and stropped on a hanging leather strop. Serious he-men wetshavers who use a straight razor have to periodically hone their razors on a stone, and then before each and every shave, they swipe the blade to and fro on a leather strop to keep the edge keen. But safety razor blades?

I believe Schick was honing all of their Injector blades -- all razor blades are "honed" in one way or another, whether it's done with a stone or a laser beam. But am I really supposed to believe Schick was stropping each and every Injector blade with "30 ft. of leather" any more than I'm supposed to believe that the Mach3 Power's "micro-pulses" make the shave closer?

How stroned do they think I am?

Meanwhile, today I shaved with the smallest shaving brush I've ever tried. I've been mulling the possibility that size actually does matter when it comes to shaving brushes, except that bigger isn't better -- smaller is. As long as the bristles are high quality -- "best" grade badger or better -- so the brush can hold a decent amount of water, a small brush should be able to outperform a larger brush.

I've certainly gravitated toward the smaller brushes, for their tighter control. When I use the big-ass brushes favored by many shavegeeks, I make a mess of myself and the entire sink -- lather up my nose, in my sideburns, on my chest, all over the sink. With a smaller brush like the Vulfix #2234, I can lather up just as well as with a big brush, and do it much more neatly, and I don't waste nearly as much lather.

So I've been trying to find the smallest possible brush that still does the job and does it well, and I think I've found it. I want to use it for a few more days before I say more, but so far, I love this little guy to death.