Thanks for the feed back. I started out with that post I referenced in my article, which had fewer entries. It didn't work. Caveat was although the online port checkers were reporting the port as open, it was not actually making through the tunnel!
I actually solved it by asking chatgpt!! I put in the suggestions and it worked. I'm also no expert on creating iptables, but once it was in place it seemed self explanatory.
I ran netcat as client-server to test it actually worked.
Hmm I see, you can always temporarily disconnect the drives too.