I think you are all getting a little confused with the shipping rates, especially the US guys.
If you live and buy in the US, your shipping charges are fairly reasonable, for anywhere else on the planet, shipping from the US is usually extortionate. So you are now seeing and feeling what we normally have to go thru when buying from overseas. Richon tools rates, although they may look high compared to normal US internal rates, they are in fact a lot lower than we usually pay for shipping from the other side of the world. He does it fairly, and calculates and ships by weight, so if you order larger and heavier parts, then you gotta pay.
I have bought all sorts of bits from Richon, diamond wheels, drills, lapping plates etc, someone mentioned even a Locline type coolant tube, of which I have purchased over a dozen. The triangular shaped plastic pieces were a little suspect, so I informed Peter, and he, as far as I know, now supplies the roundish piece versions, which are a lot more pliable and less prone to breakage when stripping or assembling. You have to remember, you are only paying cents rather than bucks, so of course, you won't get super top quality, but what you will get is very useable items for low cost.
I even bought some real cheapo carbide scribers. They turned out to be cut off 6" nails with a piece of pointed carbide brazed onto the end. Lousy to look at, but they do a great job. Cheap and cheerfull as we say in the UK. A few visitors to my shop got one as a gift and mine are used all the time.
Woodguy asked me about tungsten tooling that I use. I have bought and used some of the smaller tungsten cutters from Richon, and if you treat them correctly, they are just as good as more expensive ones from elsewhere. I very rarely break cutters as I treat them with great care when machining, no pushing them beyond what they are designed to do, and they stand up to the rigours of machining just like the more expensive ones I use, they usually go blunt rather than breaking, but that is a normal fact of life in the shop, and the tiny ones are just too small for me to resharpen. As to my larger ones, they are really top wack stuff, most costing well over a hundred bucks each, and you don't want to go down that route unless you have a specific purpose for them, like I did at one time. Stick with the cheaper ones, if looked after and not abused, they will serve you well, and allow you to get those special little jobs done that HSS won't touch.
Bogs