The first thing you need to determine is what type of finish os on the rail. Shellac strips with denatured alcohol. Lacquer is lacquer thinner. Varnish requires either methylene chloride (fast & somewhat dangerous) or one of the new 'safe' strippers (though they have a real hard time with some varnishes). Stripping interior wodwork during the winter is usually a bad idea. Spinrg, fall, and open windows are a better choice.

34"-36" is the right place for when you reach out to steady yourself going down a stair- try it! It has also been the choice for handrails for thousands of years (Local codes that mandate higher rails are decided by people with little knowledge of how we actually use space - just worries about law suits - am I a little ticked off?)

Forget the advice from "some guy at the store." Wood conditioners are meant to prevent splotching, but they do a poor job at that. Stains are of two basic types - Pigments : finely ground powders - Dyes : chemicals that are dissolved Think of third grade science where you put dirt in a jar of water and shook it and sugar in a jar of water and shook it. What was the difference the next day? The dirt mostly settled out to the bottom. The sugar remained in solution. Pigments work like the dirt and dye like the sugar. The big contrast comes about because the earlywood (large pores) get a lot of pigment in them and the latewood (hard and smooth), does not absorb so much because it's wiped off. Dyes, on the other hand will absorb more evenly and reduce the contrast (at least color wise). So, what you want is a dye. Problem is, Minwax stains are sometimes dyes, sometimes pigments, and often both. They don't tell you. I suggest looking up Bob Flexner's "Understanding Wood Finishing" at your local library, where he shows photos of oak dyed on one half and pigmented on the other. Then get some scrap of oak and test out your intended products and processes on the scrap before starting on your newel post. It's easier to not make a mistake than it is to recover from one. You can get dyes at most woodworking stores such as Rockler and Woodcraft, or via mail order. You can control the concentration by how much dye you add to solvent (distilled water in most cases). So you might want to mix up a series of concentrations and apply each to see the resulting color. But to see the true color, you will have to apply the finish coats as finishes intensify the stain colors.

Thanks, cpartist! Your stairs are gorgeous!! I definitely can see the benefit of avoiding the S-fitting, but if you look at my drawing of my stairs, it's so few steps past the vaulted plane of the ceiling that it seems like a lot to add one on the other side. That's why I'm wondering if it's possible (and would look okay) to offset the right wall of the stairs enough to have the handrail bypass it going straight up to the second floor, and then have a 90-degree turn at the top to die into the right wall. Does that make sense?