Those are great egg tips - thanks!
Here’s what I did with some olives I procured last year while walking around our city parks filled with beautiful olive trees:
Firest - washed ‘em all real good. I only picked the black ones, since I don’t care for green that much and didn’t want to deal with lye at the moment either. Then divided them into 2 groups. One to brine and the other to salt-cure.
Brined Olives - first made 3-4 slits vertically. Covered with a solution of one part salt to ten parts water; weighed down and covered. Checked every week after 3 weeks. It took about 5 to 6 weeks. Rinsed well. Stored in a 1:10 brine solution with red wine vinegar and a layer of olive oil.
Dry - layer olives with coarse salt; shake and add salt daily. Took about four weeks. Needed lots of rinsing and then storing in plain water, changing daily, reduced the saltiness quite a bit. Store in warm water with red wine vinegar and a layer of olive oil. I think I liked these best even though they were not as pretty as the brined olives.
There’s no need to ask what you are testing for or when they are ready;) You’ll know! (The unready olives are inedible, bitter, and you can’t get the taste out for hours, it seems)
Other options to try later - oven-cured olives, oil-cured olives, and green olives.