John,
My procedure: clean seeds as you describe; then soak seeds for couple of hours in weak hydrogen peroxide (1 tablespoon drugstore h2o2 in 1 cup water).
Sterilize some sand by boiling; put a nshallow (1/8 inch) layer of sterile sand into a clear plastic sterile petri dish; lay seeds on top of sand; put petridishes in frig.
Seeds start sprouting in about 60 days.
Each sprouted seed is transferred, using tweezers, to a cup filled with growing medium and grown under fluorescent light.
This has been my procedure for years - surely there is an easier way!
dave

I keep my hips in refrigerator for a month or so and then pull them out, take the seeds out and soak them for 24 hours (no more than that) in purified water and hydrogen peroxide, then scrape them clean with my finger nails. Put them back in the frig in either sand or damp paper towels for another month or more, then take them out and plant them. Actually from one year to the other my method changes but not by much.