Go too the gourd forum on garden web, do a search on cleaning gourds ,all kind of infoe on drying and cleaning gourds. I clean mine with a light bleach and water solution with a scotch brand green scrubby if I want all the texture gone, if I want some of the dtails left from the mold I do a very light dry sanding. Gourds are great.
Lindag

Hi,
I just saw a neat show telling how to color ghourds using leather dye. She seemed to get great colors. She then heated a bit of bee's wax and coated the ghourd then held over a heat element just to soften and buffed with a soft cloth to bring up the sheen. I grew ghourds last year and still haven't had time to clean them and work with them.Two of mine are still hanging out side in a tree.
She cut them with small elec saw that looked like a small version of a jig saw. I would advise that you use a mask like a painters mask when cleaning the insides out. They are filled with old dusty mold, so as soon as you get the bulk out, mist lightly with water so as not to have the mold dust in the air. An out door project. Also leave in water for a while before you scurb the out side (before you cut open) no soaking should be done after they are cut open.But you can just dry in the sun if it gets a bit too wet.
If you have a pottery tool that you use to cut away clay this makes a good scraper. I really haven't tried any of this yet but the show I watched advised all the above and she seemed to be a pro. The show was on Lynette Jennings but I don't remember the episode number for you to reference. I have a great tool that I want to try on mine as soon as I get some of my other projects finished. I bought it at a trade show it will cut out a design in an egg to a rock so I think I will be limited only by my imagination.:-) I did also look up other webb sites last year when my intentions were lofty at getting to them and found there were lots of advice submitted. I think I just typed in ghourd drying.
good luck,
Sharon

I just viewed a segment on "Home Matters". The preparation was the same, bleaching the exterior and cutting open as described already. They used a wood burning tool to burn in a design on ghourds, as well as a hot iron stamp. After they stamped in the design, they followed through with a colored pen, with a final coat of polyurethane. Actually, they did several final coats of the polyurethane. That is a variation of a technique. I think I'm going to grow some ghourds next summer and make some of these as bird feeders.