I'd get a decent vac flask, a variety of filters, both qualitative, and quantitive, of differing micron size. Then a good buchner funnel/gasket for your flask. All this can be had under $40.
You could go for one of the kits with a plastic pump, but i'd recommend investing in a mityvac pump. If your not going to use the pump often, get the plastic one, but if your going to be using it alot, get a quality pump, i went through 3 plastic pumps before realizing that.
"let those who have talked to the elves, find each other and band together" -TMK
In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy.
In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, etc. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers...
The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.โ - Wendell Berry