davepolaschek

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Note that this is based on Joel Carnat's Cruising a VPS at OpenBSD Amsterdam which is a very good guide to getting up and running. There were just a few things that I tripped over along the way, but if you have any questions I don't answer, that's a good place to go look for answers.

Booking Your VM

The first thing you need to do is click the Book your VM yellow button on OpenBSD Amsterdam. Note that this won't ask for payment up front, just technical details for the VPS, plus a public SSH key so you can get in. Also, be aware that the form is processed manually by Mischa, so there may be a delay, depending on what time of day you book the VM.

Here's a list of the information required: * Your name * Your email address * A public SSH key used for accessing your VM * The hostname for your VM. You can change this later, but the default DNS that Mischa configures for your VM will be hostname.openbsd.amsterdam * Default username on your VM. Again, you can change this, but this will be the way you get in the first time. * RAM and HDD configuration options * A note * Your VAT number if applicable

Paying

Once you receive the email from Mischa, it includes all the information needed to get into your VM. But rather than diving right in, you should pay for your VM so you don't forget in all the excitement of getting something new running.

Once you've paid, ssh into your VM. Directions are included in the onboarding email, but it wasn't entirely clear to me that I could simply ssh username@hostname.openbsd.amsterdam but you can. Or you can use the IPv4 or IPv6 address included in the email, which is what I did initially.

You can also ssh into the host rather than your VM, using the same username and SSH key and the port number provided in the email. No need to do that just yet, though. See “Connecting to the console” for that.

Initial Configuration

The random password for root on your VM is appended to the end of the ssh key you provided, so you may need to take a look at that, but as the first thing you do on your VM should be to change that, you don't need to.

ssh username@hostname.openbsd.amsterdam cat ~/.ssh/authorized_keys su - passwd root

At this point, set the new root password for your VM. Then you'll configure doas

cat > /etc/doas.conf permit keepenv persist :wheel permit nopass root ^D

Note that when actually using doas you will be prompted for the password on your account. It's probably simplest to set that password to something you'll remember and can type at this point.

passwd username

And now it's time to update your system. There is much more information available in the Upgrade your VM page.

sysupgrade syspatch reboot

Connecting to the console

Since you've restarted your VM, now you're waiting for it to reboot. The upgrade page has a section titled “Connect to the console” which will cover the details. Note that you will need the root password mentioned above at the start of the “Initial Configuration” section (or what you changed it to) if you want to do anything more than passively watch your VM rebooting.

The main time you're going to need to connect to the console will be if you Full Disk Encrypt (FDE) your VM, or if you attempt to upgrade and something goes wrong, but I've found that I just don't use the console on the host much.

Joel has more details on connecting to and using the console on his page.

Enjoy!

With that, your VPS should be up and running. Your next steps will depend on what you're planning to do with it, but for me, the very next step was configuring DNS to point to it and waiting for that to propagate, and then setting up the PTR records, which is well-documented. If you have untrusted users on your system, you'll want to protect your PTR as well, and even block access to the PTR daemon using firewall rules.

#tech #OpenBSD

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I've made a couple sets of salt and pepper shakers using the Woodcraft Salt and Pepper Shaker kit and am writing up this list so I tackle items in an order which is close to the simplest.

I'm also going to list the equipment I used. There was more than I would've expected as a newbie, and sometimes “simple” projects end up requiring quite a bit of equipment. In this case, you can get by with less, but having all this stuff makes it pretty quick and easy.

Equipment

• Nova chuck with 70mm jaws
• Nova chuck with 50mm jaws – any Nova chuck comes with these
• Nova chuck with Pin Jaw Set
• a 60 degree live tailstock for steps 1-8
• a ⅜” spindle gouge for roughing
• a ½” skew for everything else.
• tailstock drill bit chuck, or morse taper for 10mm hex shank forstner bits
• 1 inch Forstner bit with extension
• 1⅜ inch Forstner bit
• 1.5 inch Forstner bit

Steps

1. Install the chuck with the 70mm jaws on the lathe, and secure a (roughly) two inch square by 4 inch long blank in the jaws.
2. Rough the blank to about a 2 inch diameter.
3. Bore a 1⅜” hole ¼” deep in what will become the bottom.
4. Bore a 1” hole through the middle of the blank.
5. Get the bottom close to the correct outside size. You can see the walls of the 1⅜ hole, and they should be at least ⅛-¼ thick. You can always turn it down more later, but you need the bottom to fit in the 2 inch chuck for the next step.
6. Switch to a 2 inch (50mm) contracting chuck and turn the piece around.
7. Bore a 1½” hole 3/16” deep in the top using a Forstner bit. If it looks like the hole will be off-center, try repositioning the workpiece.
8. Rough the top down to about 1¾”
9. Remove the workpiece from the chuck and insert the tube with medium CA glue. It's helpful to have the top of the tube protruding about ⅛” above the bottom of the 1½ inch bore so the epoxy won't run inside the tube.
10. Put the shaker top into the top of the workpiece with epoxy, making sure not to get any inside the tube.
11. Once the epoxy has had a chance to cure, put the shaker onto the pin jaws on an expanding chuck with the bottom end on the chuck.
12. Finish turning the outside to the final shape. You can get the top edge pretty close to the shaker insert, as the inside is reinforced with epoxy. I aim for a little over 1mm thick on the wood outside the shaker top.
13. Sand and finish the shaker on the lathe. I used tung oil and shellac friction finish, with a final coat of carnauba wax.
14. Blow out the dust, pop the stopper into the bottom and then carefully finish the bottom edge of the shaker. I typically sand it on a piece of sandpaper and then apply a couple coats of shellac.

#technique #woodturning

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• Reheat setting on the toaster oven, 350 for 30 minutes.
• Halve chicken and place cut side down on wire rack in roasting pan.
• Put an ounce or so of water in the bottom of the pan (just barely cover it)
• Cover bird with a tent of foil.
• Reheat for 30 minutes or to a meat thermometer hitting 165F.

#recipe #chicken

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Ingredients

• 2 green cups wild rice (the measuring cup that comes with Zojirushi rice cookers for brown rice)
• 2 tsp Better Than Bouillon beef
• Water to the 2 cups brown rice line in the rice cooker

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• 1 pound hamburger
• 4 oz fresh or frozen mushrooms, chopped
• 6-16 oz frozen mixed vegetables or green beans
• 2 cans cream of mushroom soup

Directions

1. Cook rice in rice cooker

   ---

2. Preheat oven to 350F
3. When rice is done, brown hamburger in large skillet
4. Add mushrooms and mixed veggies to browned burger
5. Continue to cook in skillet until everything is warm

   ---

6. Put everything into 2 qt round casserole and stir to mix
7. Put lid on casserole and bake at 350 for 30 minutes

Note: no extra salt is needed unless you buy low sodium soup. A little black pepper is good if you’re the kind of person who likes that.

#recipe #mains

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Thanksgiving dinner this year included a vegetarian, and my sweetie is dairy-free, so rather than my usual sweet potatoes that include bacon grease for the fat (in place of the more traditional butter), I tried a Dairy Free Sweet Potato Casserole recipe. It required some tweaking, since the amount of streusel seemed way too much, so I cut the recipe in ⅔ and cut the topping to ⅓ which seemed to work pretty well.

Serves: 8-10

Active Time: 15-20 minutes

Clock Time: 1 hour

Carbs: 297g for the whole dish. 30-35 per serving.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds sweet potatoes, cubed (1cm) and boiled or roasted until tender. You’re going to be mashing them, so a little overdone is not fatal. Boiling takes 7 minutes, steaming a little longer, up to 15 minutes if starting from frozen.
• 2 eggs
• ¼ C brown sugar, packed
• 3 Tbsp oil
• ½ tsp vanilla
• scant ½ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp cinnamon

Directions

• Prepare sweet potatoes, and mash them
• Preheat oven to 375°︎ F or 190°︎ C
• In a large bowl, or the pot you cooked the sweet potatoes in, mix sweet potato ingredients together. You can use an electric mixer if you’d like, but I use a potato masher, and prefer the slightly chunky texture.
• Put mixture into a 8” round casserole without the lid
• Bake for 25 minutes
• Prepare streusel (below) and sprinkle over potatoes in casserole
• Bake for an additional 15 minutes with no lid, until streusel is golden brown and delicious.
• Serve immediately or cover and serve within 30 minutes. Can sit longer if you keep them warm in a 140°︎F (60°︎ C) oven.

Streusel Ingredients

• ⅓ C light brown sugar, packed
• 3 Tbsp all purpose flour
• ½ tsp oil
• 1 tsp water

Streusel Directions

• Mix with a fork until crumbly

#recipe #sideDish

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A while ago, I read Dave Fisher’s post on his Souped-up Sharpening Shelf and thought that sounded like a great idea to get some consistency in my gouge-sharpening. It’s not that all of my carving gouges are dull, but I’ve been hand-sharpening them, and I don’t always get the angle the same, so over time, that leads to a dubbed edge, which may be beneficial or not (do some searching and reading if you want a lot of different opinions). In any case, a badly dubbed edge is not good, and consistency will get me to a happier place.

I also got a Tormek SVS-38 Short Tool Jig to use with it, and since that wants a ⅜” rod to ride on, I bought a stainless rod, as well.

With all the pieces put together (the pieces of wood at the ends were quickly half-lapped onto the main board, and the metal rod is friction-fit into holes in those pieces), here’s how the jig looks in use.

The one other modification I needed was to put a couple strips on the bottom of the box holding one of my sharpening stones. These allow it to rise above the metal edge on my bench (which is definitely not traditional on a woodworking bench, but I find it useful) and get the gouge at the proper angle with minimal fuss.

Putting these together gets the gouge on the stone as shown below. The angle is a bit steeper than the gouge was originally sharpened at, and I’ll probably lower it in the future, but sharpening at a steeper angle like this allowed me to see the results quickly. I put a line on the side of the board so I can recreate this if needed, and I expect I’ll add more lines over time. And of course, as the gouges get shorter with repeated sharpening, I’ll need to adjust the angle by putting the board lower in the vise, which will mean even more lines on the board. But the lines on the front of the board will help me keep the board level.

After a dozen passes of the gouge back and forth, rolling it to try to sharpen the entire length of the edge, I got this:

And this:

As you can see in the second photo, I didn’t quite get the gouge rolled far enough to sharpen all the way to the edge of the bevel, but very quickly I got a mirror surface on the gouge. This was with a hard Arkansas oil stone, which is quite a bit finer than the grit the gouge was originally ground with at the factory, as you can see in the photos.

Overall, I’m pleased with this setup. It took me a couple hours to knock this jig together, plus $40 in materials, and I now have a jig which will help me sharpen my gouges in a more repeatable manner. The Tormek jig isn’t ideal for a large veiner like this gouge, as it’s difficult to roll the tool over far enough, but for 90% of my gouges, this should do a good job and help me keep them sharp, rather than waiting until they’re dull before I decide I have to sharpen.

#handyTools #sharpening #woodworking

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I’m going to be making a new top for our dining room table one of these years, and as that will be a 5 foot diameter circle of plywood, veneered and edge-banded, I figured I should practice veneering a bit.

I found a small pine box with no bottom or top (I think it was the excess trimmed off a box to hold one of my lathe chucks) which was slightly under 6 inches square, by about 2½ inches tall. And I found some 6 inch wide hardwood “micro lumber” which was ⅛ inch thick that I used to make a top and bottom for the box. They’re simply glued on.

While that was drying in the clamps, I dug through my veneer sampler box that I bought from Veneer Supplies (mine was an 8½ x 11 x 6 inch box) and found a sheet of lacewood or snakewood which should be big enough (it’s 8 inches by 10½ inches) to cover all four sides of the box.

Next up will be softening and flattening that sheet (I think I’ll use a couple pieces of picture framing acrylic and a stack of wood for a press), mixing up a new batch of glue, and cutting the sheet into four pieces the right size for the sides of the box.

We’ll see how it goes!

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That answers part of the question. I definitely need to treat the cauls I use so the glue that seeps through the veneer doesn’t stick to them.

I’ve stuck a piece of packing tape on each caul, and did the other two sides of the box. If that works, I’ll remove the damaged side and find another piece of veneer in the sampler box to try.

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With fresher glue today, I also had to thin it a bit more so I had a decent working time. By the time I got all the clamps on the box, this had happened:

So I soaked that side of the box down again, and used a card scraper to gently peel up the veneer, scrape off the glue, put on new glue, and try again. I can see that my strategy of leaving the veneer overlarge and trimming it back to the box dimensions after the glue has dried won’t work, so I learned at least two things this morning.

But I think that’s it for today. I’ll maybe look for a piece of veneer for the badly damaged side and cut it to size, but I need to let the box dry before trying to do anything more with it.

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After a few days of no shop time, I got back out to the shop this morning (Saturday, the 17th). I planed the wrecked veneer off the side of the box using my Carter mitre plane, then found a piece of birch burl which I thought would look nice and glued that on.

When I removed the box from the clamps and cauls after a half-hour, the new veneer looked good, so I set it on the bench to finish drying while I worked on some other things. After a half-hour, I noticed the burl veneer had curled almost into a circle as the side not glued to the box had dried faster than the side next to the box. I didn't take a photo, but I basically wet everything down and re-glued the veneer down. Hide glue was invaluable here, since hide glue will stick to dried hide-glue. PVA glues would have required completely removing the veneer and sanding the underlying pine clean, since almost nothing will stick to dried PVA glue.

With the burl glued on, and given a couple hours to cure, I pulled the box from the clamps again, and proceeded to trim the edges of the burl veneer. I used one of my gent saws with the finest teeth (32 tpi, I believe) to cut as close to the edge of the box as possible, then used the mitre plane to get the edges baby-butt-smooth, and hit the box with a coat of tung oil. The result is above.

The next session in the shop, I'll cut this box open, add hinges and a latch, and do some serious finishing. I think I'll probably French polish the box.

---

I cut the box open and put in an ash liner, which serves to align the top, and hold it in place. I decided against hinges and a latch, preferring a piston fit.

The ash liner needed some reinforcement at the corners, so I cut some spalted elm into triangular shapes and glued it in the corners. More visual interest, and much-needed reinforcement.

I also added some edge-banding to the top and bottom surfaces that were exposed when I cut the box open. This makes the box look much more finished. I should have been more careful about trimming the inner edges of the banding for a better look, but had the edges been all the same size, I would not have needed to do the trimming. I also didn’t have quite enough of one of the styles of banding to go all the way around the box, so one side got a different pattern. It looks a little goofy, but again, more practice!

And then I started French polishing, but at some point the already-applied finish pulled a bit (I probably did not have enough oil on my pad) and left a bit of a mess, so I sanded the box back a little bit with 0000 steel wool and started applying Tried and True Varnish Oil, which will be my final finish. It’s nearly fool-proof, though a bit slow, as each coat needs to dry overnight before the next coat can be applied, but it’s simpler to apply, and looks really good once enough thin coats are built up.

A think a few more days of this slow finishing regimen will see the box complete. At that point I’ll give it a few days to cure, and then apply a coat of paste wax. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the box, but I suspect it will get given away.

#projects #veneering #buildBlog

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A while back, I bought a sander designed to square pen blanks from Penn State Industries. It’s a nice little unit, but there are small pieces included and it’s not a nice shape to store, so I built a box to hold it.

Construction is pretty simple, but I tried a few things to practice them. The sides and ends of the box are angled in at a 7.5°︎ angle. The dovetails were otherwise cut as normal, which worked fine, though I appreciated having made the sides from pine when it came time to fit things together, as pine will compress a little which makes inaccuracies less of a pain.

The bottom of the box is some poplar I had on hand. Had to glue up some boards to get the right shape, and then I added cleats to hold the sander in place.

The top of the box sits over the base and the sander, and I will be attaching the sander to the base once I’m certain that’ll work. I’ll also be building storage pockets into the cover of the box to hold things like spare sanding discs and the adapter so I can connect the sander to the dust collector.

Finally, I did some practice carving on the sides of the box. Nothing super-fancy, but it felt like I needed some practice, and I know I found a half-dozen gouges that needed sharpening along the way, so it was a good time to do some carving.

That’s it.

---

Of course, that isn’t it. A friend on mastodon asked about the style of the carving. I replied:

I learned mostly from Ron Aylor, who was heavily inspired by Peter Follansbee, so yes, it’s in the style of Peter Follansbee, but at a remove. I bought Ron’s Categories of 17th-Century Mannerist Carving years ago, and mostly refer to that, but I also have been reading through Mary May’s Carving the Acanthus Leaf and some of the details are things from her book.

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Of course, that isn’t it, either. Since I’m reading about carving the acanthus leaf, I decided to get some practice. I sketched a leaf on the uncarved side of the box a while ago, and started lowering the background around it this morning. More to come, I’m sure.

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Another three hours working on the leaf this morning, and the leaf is farther along. I had problems with the central rib / stem of the leaf, and there are a number of finer ribs I still need to carve, but I’m also thinking that maybe I’ve had enough for this practice.

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No time yesterday, and only about 90 minutes this morning, but I cleaned up the leaf a bit, and may do a little more on it tomorrow, plus I started lowering the background around a circular hex (maybe). I think the border is going to be a barrel and bead pattern.

I worked this morning with a relatively strong sidelight. I keep being surprised at just how much better I can see what I’m doing with just small changes to the light.

---

Two more sessions, one short (almost exactly an hour) and one longer (three hours and a bit) and I think I have finished. At a minimum, I got close enough to put a coat of oil on the wood and step away from it. I’ll see what I think once the oil has had a chance to cure.

#woodworking #shopStorage #woodCarving

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This is the “Zap Colors” bookmarklet I've been using for decades. I wanted to mention it on mastodon, but trying to paste javascript there is... fraught.

Apologies for the formatting. The bookmarklet needs things quoted and such so it survives in my bookmarks file without getting mangled, and it's easier to just keep that than to try and reformat this. Though perhaps on another day, I'll make the effort.

javascript:(function()%7Bvar%20newSS,%20styles='*%20%7B%20background:%20white%20!%20important;%20color:%20black%20!important%20%7D%20:link,%20:link%20*%20%7B%20color:%20%230000EE%20!important%20%7D%20:visited,%20:visited%20*%20%7B%20color:%20%23551A8B%20!important%20%7D';%20if(document.createStyleSheet)%20%7B%20document.createStyleSheet(%22javascript:'%22+styles+%22'%22);%20%7D%20else%20%7B%20newSS=document.createElement('link');%20newSS.rel='stylesheet';%20newSS.href='data:text/css,'+escape(styles);%20document.getElementsByTagName(%22head%22)%5B0%5D.appendChild(newSS);%20%7D%20%7D)();

#javascript #codeSnippet

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