More images:

After asking this forum what to use on some pretty red oak wood, someone mentioned hardening wax oils as a good option. I gave Odie's a try, mainly because these banisters can't be detached and Odie's doesn't smell as strong.

End result has been great. Application was easy. Buffed in the first cost, went to buff it out and it was totally dry, so I buffed a second coat in. Then 45 min later I buffed off the excess. Took about 3 hours total.

Water beads on the resulting finish, and really compliments the grain of the wood! Already planning to use Odie's on future projects.

I've got 4 varieties in my backyard. The one on the left is Amalia, and is on year three. Middle trellis has a year two Vista, and a new Willamette that was planted from a friend's crown. Far right is Multihead.

Looking like I should have a good sized crop this year.

I've had these banisters in my house for ages that had this really poorly done ugle brown/maroon paint. My wife got fed up with them and decided to strip and sand them.

Wonder of wonders, what's under there is some kind of dense hardwood with some great grain to it.

Now I'm trying to decide how to finish it.

My initial plan had been what I always do: basic stain plus a wipe on poly of some sort. Pretty good, pretty easy.

However, this is significantly higher quality wood than the cheap pine I usually work with. It was suggested to me I look into a Tung or Danish oil, and I've now fallen down a deep rabbit hole of wood finishing.

Any preferred finishes that emphasize grain for pretty wood in high traffic areas?

What are everyone's recommendations on making android more private? Given Google's recent behavior around tracking and the like, I'm not really comfortable with then having all of my data. I've even contemplated going to iOS, since apple doesn't have a vested interest in me having less privacy... But I just don't like their OS lol.

I've tried GrapheneOS, and it's not awful. For usability, I did have to add Google apps back in, but at least they are sandboxes.

For the moment though, my daily driver is a Samsung S21. What can I do to make I more private?

So far, I have:

1. Switched to Samsung browser with adblock.
2. Started using duckduck go.
3. Installed duckduck go's app tracking protection. That was an eye opener.
4. Restricted location history in Google maps.

What else? I know Graphene is typically the gold standard, but I'm trying to see what I can do short of that.

Had an 20+ year old pergola falling apart on my back porch. Designed and built this 16x12' guy over the course of 2 days.

I built the whole thing using and impact driver, and a miter saw for cuts. I used joist hangers for the cross pieces as well.

It's designed to handle up to 1 ft of snow without sagging, which would be a record for this part of NM. So far seems to be holding up.

Really happy with how it turned out.