Stair renovation with pine stringers, 12 steps

Hello everyone,

we have taken apart a wooden staircase to the attic (12 steps, two stringers all made of softwood, screwed) in order to sand it down and treat it after 20 years.
When we moved in here 10 years ago, the staircase was only clear varnished (the varnish was already quite damaged). Unfortunately, we made a bad mistake and painted it over with linseed oil. The stuff did not properly penetrate the wood but partly remained on the varnish, causing a somewhat sticky surface and attracting dust. Cleaning is difficult.

We are now addressing the problem and do not want to make another mistake:
The individual steps as well as the stringers will now be sanded down separately; the wood will then be raw and unsealed. We do not want to varnish – we are rather considering oiling or waxing (or both).

Now the questions:

[*]What is the best way to proceed here? Are there any recommendations – maybe from personal experience?

[*]What is your opinion on carnauba wax?

Thanks in advance for the information!

Best regards

I once had a similar woodworking problem and found several forums with many people working with woodworking using common search engines, maybe a question like that is answered faster there than here.

I would recommend a hard wax oil, e.g. from the company Clou.
Best regards