Gutta-Percha and Redmanol

Gutta-percha and Redmanol are two materials that were tried in pipe mouthpiece (stem) making and have since both been abandoned. There's no chemical kinship between them: one is a plant-derived thermoplastic drawn from Southeast Asian trees, the other an early product of the American plastics industry, a synthetic resin.

What they share is that both were put forward as replacements for amber and hardened rubber, and neither one lasted. Both appear mostly in pipes with briar bowls, as well as in cigar and cigarette holders.

What Gutta-Percha Is

Gutta-percha is obtained by refining and coagulating the latex of trees of the genus Palaquium, in the family Sapotaceae; the name comes from Malay. It softens when heated and hardens on cooling, holding the shape it's given; unlike rubber, it doesn't spring back. Being moldable made it a sought-after raw material in 19th-century industry. Insulation for submarine telegraph cables, root-canal fillings in dentistry, and golf balls known as "gutties" are its best-known uses.

The first person in Europe to study the material was John Tradescant, who brought a sample from the Far East in 1656 and named it "mazer wood." Practical use came two centuries later, and after the physician William Montgomerie, serving in British India, recognized the material's medical value, the Royal Society of Arts awarded him a gold medal in 1843.