an old pressure canner/cooker makes a pretty good pot. I remade the lid out of 1" poly carb so I could see what it is doing. I'm with Edward on a quality pump. A cheap one will give you a good education but long term (if the bug bites) you'll prolly want a good one.
Took me two years of pretty diligent research to discover this...don't even want to think about the cost of experimentation...sigh. (this is the biggest trade secret I own...lol.)
you will need to run these at about 8K rpm in steel. I have used these on heat treated and un-heattreated blades...