I am fairly new to this, but I have had great success shaving with a straight razor. I recently purchased a Norton set and another razor (Boker Silver Steel), honed it using Lynn Abram's circle method and then finished it on a kosher coticule. Here are my questions: my coticle is short, only 4", there is a significant amount of lateral motion to complete an "X", is this coticle too short? Will the lateral movement affect my razor negatively? Also, if I want to go with a Naniwa stone (12K), I read that is is possible to use the Norton lapping stone to lap it, but should I really choose something else to lap it? Thank you!