I delivered the first partial batch of 80s to EP on the 9th, it just takes time to get stuff on their website. They are for sale if you ask. The price is in the $75 range, I don't know exactly what it is yet. This is because I am charging more for them. There is a bit more diamond by weight and they are a PITA to make. The bigger diamond crystals cause a lot of trouble. Use sand to dress them and I suggest a dedicated plate as I fear these stones will dish the plate quickly. Right now I am using some leftover 12" porcelain tiles that seem to be holding up well. They are not very flat but it doesn't matter much with these stones and sand, they are beasts.
How well the alcohol cleans depends on the strength, my bottle says 90%, and how dirty you let the stones get before cleaning. As far as the stones loading up I think this is more of an issue of them settling down after dressing. The first knife or two the stones will be much more aggressive but leave a coarser finish. Once they break in, and you keep them clean, they should work pretty much the same for quite a while. This is the way I preffer to use them as I like less tooth and more polish. If you like the more aggressive character of the stones then dress them more often. I dressed the 650, 1100, 2300, and 4000 last night and timed it. It took me 90 seconds to dress all the stones without rushing, using the 240 grit AlOx from EP. This does not include wetting the plate and applying the abrasive or cleaning up. Just dress the stone and set it in a tray of water, it doesn't take much to maintain them.
Once I start to apex my knife I only use edge trailing strokes. Once you get used to it you may find it easier to use more of the stones length, I did. To use more of the stones width try rolling it a little as you use it, I find this helps use more of the stone's surface.
The mineral oil was interesting but I think it works best on the lower grits, but so does water. It stays stuck to the stones quite well but this also keeps all the swarf from washing off which I worry will cause more contamination problems with the 4k stone. I tried both a low viscosity type for cutting boards and the thick stuff from the grocery store. The cutting board low viscosity oil is as thick as you would want it for the Matrix stones. I will slather a few stones up with it and put them in my lightbulb oven where I cure the epoxy on my switchplates. This will give them a lot of temperature cycling to make sure the oil doesn't attack anything about the stones. After a few weeks of this and no problems I will report back that mineral oil is ok to use if you want. For me it's water. I keep a tray by my sharpener and rinse the stones off after each use. When I used the EP AlOx stones I did the same thing, but I kept them soaking between knives.
Here are microscope photos of the 80 and 250 stones. These are the stones I have been using for awhile and I haven't dressed them in a long time. The 80 grit diamond crystals are around .0062" in size and the 250 are around .0031" for reference.
