Some of us haven't got the luxury of being able to do gourds 24-7 so we get by the best we can.  I stumbled on a great, cheap help to clean out the inside of a gourd--a grapefruit spoon i got in Goodwill for 15 cts. over 5 yrs. ago.  My nails were full of gourd membrane from trying to scratch it out and I wasn't making much progress so i went to make coffee and found that 'useless' spoon lurking in the silverware drawer.  It was magic.  It gutted that baby so fast that sanding was just an after-thought.  Cool tool.  If any of you guys out there have never seen a grapefruit spoon,it has a tapered,serated point.  You can make one for yourself quite easily.