Michael's
Art/Craft Store has a wonderful pumpkin scraper on the market for Halloween.
It's a large curved spoon with teeth on it & a wonderful soft handle...only
$6.99. I have tried it on gourds and it is fabulous!
Pat
F.
Another thing that works well for gourds is a metal jar lid insert, like the ones for Mason canning jars. -- Kathy James
My husband purchased 2 long handled ice tea spoons & ground one flat on the bottom & sharpened it. The second he just sharpened the rounded edge. Now he has 2 utencils for round or flat areas in the gourd........Sammy M. in TX
To clean out a gourd this tip will only work if you know the inside "guts" are light and loose. Add several short / stubby screws thru your cleaning hole. Tape over the hole. Then shake and twirl your gourd to allow the screws to tumble and scape the inside. Remove the tape and dump out the screws and "guts". Then use compressed air to blow out, use a dust mask for this step. This cleanout works great for a birdhouse. --Tom B. --Illinois
My husband made a great long handled scraper from a BBQ fork. Cut the tines off, rounded the end on his grinder, sharpened it. Works great. I also use a sturdy melon ball tool to scrape gourd bowls. Kathy H. -- OK
To clean the inside of a
bottle neck gourd, take a kitchen metal spoon and sharpen one side. If
it is not long enough you can take a dowel rod, a metal, etch and tape
it to the handle of the spoon. Using this method you can twist the spoon
around the round gourd. -- Sandra Hutchins -- GA
| Recent Question: Why do many of my gourds have the white interior coating in them that's so hard to clean out? What can I do to prevent this? -- Ronda in Illinois |
After asking several people in the Gourd Patch, about the white lining
in the gourd, we pretty much decided that the growing process, drying process,
variety of gourd did not make a difference on the thick, hard to remove
white lining showing up in gourds.
So we concluded that gourds
insides are as varied as their outsides. But they did come up with some
great ideas on making it easier to clean these gourds. Please note:
everyone who wrote wanted me to remind the person who asked the question
to wear a respirator or dust mask when cleaning out the gourds, just to
be safe from the irritants of fine dust, or mold that can bother
some people.
I myself clean out most of the debri then put in small sharp edged stones,
and shake the stones around in the gourd. This does a great job sanding
the inside of the gourd. I add the stones, shake a few minutes, then empty
the stones and paper out. I repeat the process if necessary. Mug in MI
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If it is intact, I
tend to leave it just because it is so pretty. If it's torn or has
a few bare spots, I've learned to just fill the gourd with water and let
it soften the insides for several hours or overnight. Then, after
draining it, I can usually get an X-acto knife blade or other slim blade
behind a section of it and then I can just pull the whole section away
from the wall of the gourd. I go around the gourd that way and it
makes cleaning it much easier and faster, besides cutting way down on the
dust and irritants from it. Works for me and hope that it might help.
-- Iris in OK
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I've found that a Pampered
Chef grapefruit knife (it's curved and serrated) works great on those white
insides. -- Cindy in WI
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I've opened several gourds
that had the white lining. Usually, it's in patches so I have
to clean it out. But, sometimes I find one that is solid white
which happened a couple of weeks ago. I carefully removed several
layers to make it a little smoother, sealed it with JW Sealer, and
hand brushed two coats of JW Gloss varnish over it. This made
it harder. I had never done this before so didn't know what
to expect. By the way, cleaning out a gourd isn't one of my favorite
things to do either. -- Hellen in TX
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I fill them with water for
a couple days and scrap the lining out with the scrapers that Jim Widess
sells. You could make scrapers using those fine band saw blades if
you knew how to fold them and insert them in a wooden handle. Helen in
IN
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For most of my gourds I
clean them with a flap sander attached to my drill - that does a pretty
good job on the white pearl-like lining. For gourds that I need to do by
hand - for the white stuff I use a scallop sea shell. I have them
in several sizes and curves. They are easy to hold, incredibly cheap
and very sturdy. With a bit of extra effort they cut thru the white
stuff pretty well. The down side - it really scores the inside
so it does require more sanding to smooth it out. I don't mind the
extra sanding - I prefer getting the white stuff out fairly quickly and
it does do that. -- Suzanne
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I use the circular inner
lid that is used on a canning jar. The edge of it is curved under and makes
a perfect scraper, as well as it
shape being round. I use
2 sizes.. one for widemouth jars and the other for small mouth jars. Louise
in FL