A guard for providing a cut-resistant pathway through a body orifice or incision to circumferentially protect tissue at the margin is provided. The guard is made of flexible, cut-resistant mesh material having a plurality of interwoven thermosoftening filaments. The guard has a central lumen and at least one flared end. The flared end, which serves to anchor the guard in the body opening, is deformable into a reduced configuration to facilitate its insertion and removal. The layer of mesh stretches laterally to increase the diameter of the central lumen. The flexibility and expandability of the guard allows the guard to conform to body openings of different sizes. The guard may include a drawstring to cinch the flared distal end from the proximal end. The guard is thermoset with the flared distal end that is biased to spring back to its normal, undeformed configuration when released from a deformed configuration.

A pipe belling process where a heated thermoplastic pipe end is forced over a sealing gasket on a forming mandrel, with the pipe being subsequently cooled to retain the gasket in an internal groove simultaneously formed in the pipe end. The sealing gasket is a two-component gasket with an elastic component and a plastic component. The elastic component is stretched over a portion of the plastic component during assembly with the plastic component acting as a belling ramp for the gasket during the subsequent pipe belling operation.

A polymer pipe has a length between a first end and a second end. The length and the first end have a first diameter and the second end is a belled end having a second diameter larger than the first diameter. An insert device is received or pre-installed within the second end and has an annular body with a seal part coupled to the annular body and a spline groove formed in the annular body and facing radially inward. Another polymer pipe is inserted in the belled end to form a pipe joint assembly and has a mating spline groove on the outer surface. The spline groove and mating spline groove axially align and receive a spline therein to axially interlock the two polymer pipes to form a pipe joint assembly.