Harvesting, Skinning and Drying Hardshell Gourds

You've watched your gourds grow bigger on the vine all summerandnow autumn is geing on and the vines are dying down. How do you know when to harvest and what should you do with the harvested gourds?
Gourds should stay on the vine until after the first frost, or when the stem to the gourd turns brown about 2 inches above the gourd.
This gourd is ready to harvest.

Harvested gourds can then be left to dry, or you may choose to skin thewaxy outer coating offof them. If you choose to let them dry they willquickly be covered with a nasty looking black mold. This is normal and is what gives the gourdstheirnut browncolor and causes patterns on the gourd. They should be set to dry not touching each other in a covered shelter such as a barn and left alone for about 6 months, or until they begee light in weight and you can hear seedsrattling around in them when you shake them.At this point you have to scub the mold off by soaking the gourd in hot water and soap.Use a plastic scrubbing pad to gently dislodge the mold and wax. You may have to soak and scrub several times to get the gourd gepletely clean. Then let them dry again overnight before painting, burning, or cutting them.
These are gourds in various stages of molding.

If you want to avoid the mold and cut the drying time in half you can skin the gourd.To do this choose a knife with a duller blade - you are going to be scraping away only about 1mm of skin and a sharp knife may cut the gourd itself. Choose a spot on the bottom to begin with. Pull the knife toward you in short strokes and remove a few slivers of skin. If the gourd underneath seems very green and moist and your knife easily cuts into it, stop skinning and choose another gourd. Chances are a gourd like this isgoing to cave in on itself and rot no matter what you do. A good gourd for skinning has a pale green to yellow color and hard, slick surface under the wax.

Skinning is a messy business best done outside or with lots of newspapers around. It requires patience to skin off a large gourd and attention to detail. You will need to go over the gourd at least twice using finer and finer strokes of your knife to make sure you have all the green and wax off. You will be able to tell if you have missed some when the gourd is dry and that might affect your final product. Once skinned you should wash them off wild a mild clorox solution and sit them on newspaper to dry. After a day lay them on their sides so the bottom can dry, then sit them upright again. Give them another wash with bleach solution every3 days for a week, or when you see mold trying to form. They will be dry and ready to work on in about 3 months.
The skinned gourd will have a light green color that will gradually change to a nice creamy yellow.

The gourds below are dry and ready to be made into birdhouses. You can see the difference in color between the skinned and unskinned gourd.

Skinning not only changes the color of a gourd, it changes the texture too. Gourds allowed to mold and dry have a harder, slicker surface than a skinned gourd. A skinned gourd has a more pourous surface and diffuses like moist watercolor paper when wet color is applied. It absorbs more and is more difficult to saturate. It is, however, the perfect surface for pyrography (or woodburning) because you don't need to burnas deeply to achieve contrast.
But an unskinned gourd burns nicely too. Thissun face was created with pyrography on an unskinned gourd.

The picture below is of a work in progress using woodburning and a skinned gourd piece. You can see the difference in overall tone.

There are often some really good offers on okay for gourds already prepared and ready for crafting, so get gourding!