Swim started out with nothing.. Just a friend pointing swim into the direction of TSII and the Hive. You may ask yourself, time and time again... What do I need? What do I say when I order? Well, if you look in the right places, you wont need to say a thing.. Nadda.. Swim first, before anything else, purchased 7-8 used college chemistry books. Before glass, sass anything... You are going to need the reading material to get you by, you will not bee able to do this one night, one week, one month. This is an investment, takes time, and the more you put in, the more your gonna get out of it. Ok. After the books, because of the worries of regulating Sass, swim started buying pounds first, then kilo's... Swim heard so many rumors of bad sass, denatured sass, adulterants etc... So, after non cook friend(s), 4 to be exact, had order sass from exactly 6, yup, count em 6, suppliers of sass. Only one was bunk. So dispell any worries of no more sass in america. Now that swim had the horse before the carriage as a kind bee pointed out, it was time to move on. I cannot stress this enough to any bees who strugle with sourcing, or who are just plain paranoid of ordering from supply houses. (<---- definetly paranoid, trance is one freaky paranoid schizophrenic) Our favorite and beloved auction sites hold everything you need. Too date: 10 flasks, 2 fb 500ml, 4 rb 500ml, 2 fb 250ml, 2 rb 250ml, and 2 1000ml, (1rb and 1fb) addition funnel, claisien adapter, bent vac adapter, 3 condensers, thermometers, plenty of beakers, watch glass, and good clamps and stands. All 24/40, no chips, most brand new. Grand total spent $180.00. Yup, you read right, 180.00 including shipping. But Trance, didnt swiy need some chems, surely swiy chems? Well glad you asked that. 8 gr. to date of pdcl, total cost 200$(i guess there is no cheap answer to that one) fisher, 30 grms mercuric chloride, $20, fisher. But trance, swiy must of needed more than just those two chems. Chloroform, Ammonium Chloride, DCM, DMF, formaldehyde, borhydride, Cyanoborhydride, (<-yes your reading right) Acetone, and Iodine just to name a few of the goodies. They are there, but they all werent there at a simple search of the auction site. This has been almost a year in progress. Searching every day as swim got to work, went through every page of glass, searched every fucking way to find chems, the easiest, is just seacrh under "Chloride" Itll pull up some goodies at first, but check the sellers other items, you will find a mecca, and youll learn the regular sellers after a few weeks, youll know that some of them buy the search statistics from ebay, an youll be like wow, I searched every day for this chemical for two weeks, now 4 of them are selling it. But trance, after your chems your forgot the two biggee's.. Vac and hp stirrer. Ok.. Get ready for this... Brand new, no shipping charges, still in ups next day aired box, Gast diaphram lab vac with guages, contin. rated for 25" HG, and VWR 7x7 brand new never been turned on hp/stirrer. This years models, very nice I might add. Total cost $300. Again, its not gonna happen over night, but swim has seen more pdcl and borhydride peddled over taht nice auction site than anywhere else. I havent bought a thing with my CC, (except for sass, but I paid non cooks friends to use their cc #100% markup for doing it) or given out my real info once. Listen to this bee, he knows. Everything was aquired cheaper than dirt, (except the chems, a wee bit of mark up for anonymous purchase, and the suppliers know this. So while we strive to bee safe, let alon source everything, no need too. Time heals all my friend, and maybe this might help a newbee, as some here have helped swim when he was new...