Hi everyone! So it has been over a week since I got my first straight razor. And Right off the bat I did something that I learned that I should not have.....I bought a nice straight razor. I bought an AoS with a Thiers-Issard blade and Bocote scales. It is beautiful and I am very pleased with it but I am afraid that I am going to do something wrong and damage it. I have been extremely careful with in shaving, stopping etc. But i still feel i will necessarily do sonething horribly wrong because i am so inexperencied. Please tell me that i am mistaken? But I have a few questions that I was hoping SRP could help me with:

1. I took my blade to get sharpened at a local place that sharpens knives. Does a place like this generally suffice? I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan and there aren't a lot of shops around that sharpen blades so when I found that this store I was thrilled. But I started to think that maybe they are not equipped to properly sharpen straight razors. Are my suspicions justified?

2. I am really only comfortable shaving with my right (dominant) hand. Will this be problematic for the quality of my shave?

3. Finally, I have completed 4 shaves now and besides the giant laceration on my cheek, thing have been pretty good. Did the more experienced folk come to find that their angles got better with time? Because right now I feel as though it is tough to properly get certain strokes.

Thank you for any help! This is such a cool forum and I am very excited to be part of such a cool group!

BnB