Unless I want to change the bevel on a knife, or an edge gets dinged from hard use, I rarely ever need to touch a stone. I found the key to hair splitting upper echelon sharpness is a good strop and using it regularly to maintain a highly polished edge.
Since your buddy puts a good edge on your knives, I'd suggesting beginning with and mastering the strop and then work backward to the stones -- and then with the stones begin with the super fine grit and then strop. The object is to master hair popping sharpness on blades which already have a good edge so you get used to the angles, etc., before moving over to serious metal moving/removing surfaces.
There are many ways to skin the cat so to speak.