@50ft_trad try letting the tobacco dryout for 10 minutes then pack the bottom half of the bowl. Have a pipe tool handy if you need to tamp and possible stab an air hole into the packed tobacco if it too hard to draw
Try a different tobacco, too. Shags tend to burn quickly unless they are too wet. Something like MacBaren’s Club Blend or Symphony will burn slower once you get a second-lighting coal glowing, allowing you to just sip at the pipe to keep it lit. Relighting a pipe is a common practice and not a bad thing.
@50ft_trad try letting the tobacco dryout for 10 minutes then pack the bottom half of the bowl. Have a pipe tool handy if you need to tamp and possible stab an air hole into the packed tobacco if it too hard to draw
Thanks! I did wonder about the moisture content, I’ll give that a whirl
Try a different tobacco, too. Shags tend to burn quickly unless they are too wet. Something like MacBaren’s Club Blend or Symphony will burn slower once you get a second-lighting coal glowing, allowing you to just sip at the pipe to keep it lit. Relighting a pipe is a common practice and not a bad thing.
Again, thanks for the input! All I have at the moment for playing with is two shags (Dark Birdseye and Rumbh) and a bit of Bob’s Chocolat Flake which I understand also needs rubbing out and drying a bit before packing
I tried again this evening, and drying the tobacco first before firing up the Cherry Ozark made a huge difference. I am beginning to think that tobacco might be a little rich for this pipe though - not sure why as a novice like me should maybe not be coming to those assumptions yet - but I am wondering if a milder smoke would be better in this pipe. This has got me looking now at churchwardens which I like the idea of (specifically Macqueen Wizard in briar), but my wallet is frightened. As for the mini corn cob (about 3.1/2" overall) - it bit me again! This has again got me thinking that it might be partially that the smoke is too hot as the pipe is so short. The bowl cavity is so small the pipe tamper actually touches the sides and barely fits in the hole too - it’s almost like a pipe that’s used for other purposes :-" What did seem to work very well though (and I appreciate I may be sneered upon or chastised for this) was hand rolling tobacco. So more practice is required, but I’m thinking a long pipe for the dark tobaccos, the Cherry Missouri Ozark for the milder smokes, and the Mini Corn Cobs (I actually got two, they were so cheap) for flavoured RYO baccy. Feel free to slap some sense into me if I’m wildly off the mark 
OK, after a couple (more) hours reading up, I’m starting to get a much better perspective on the nuances of all this. The thing what’s helped most is reading several different perspectives and writing styles. It’s almost like navigating by triangulation. I now … I think … I hope … have a better understanding of what I’m trying to achieve and what’s liable to be the issue if I don’t. It’s still going to take some time to put it into practice and develop the “feel” I reckon, but the penny is definitely starting to teeter even if it hasn’t actually dropped. Big thanks again to basement_shamen and Mouse - those suggestions were just what I needed to poke me looking into the right areas. Cheers guys!
As mentioned above, drawing hard or smoking fast is a guarantee for tongue bite, but I also find that if I smoke a lot of virginias, especially if they are flavored… they will bite as well, the effect compounded when I am working or excited… and start puffing too fast… But hang in there, pipe smoking can be and is a real pleasure if done right and with the right tools…
@50ft_trad I’ve been smoking a pipe since about august, and it really is about getting the ‘feel’ for it. I will say though that once I stopped ‘thinking’ about the pack or the draw and just smoked to relax(Which is how you should smoke a pipe), it became second nature. My 2 cents…whatever that is worth 
@50ft_trad I’ve been smoking a pipe since about august, and it really is about getting the ‘feel’ for it. I will say though that once I stopped ‘thinking’ about the pack or the draw and just smoked to relax(Which is how you should smoke a pipe), it became second nature. My 2 cents…whatever that is worth
Yeah, I’m kind of tuning into that, but after smoking cigs for so long it’s not an easy adjustment. I do feel like I’m getting there, but there is still a way to go yet
Two mistakes that new pipe smokers are prone to making are: 1. packing the bowl too tightly. This makes it hard to get lit, and predisposes the pipe to go out frequently. It also means you have to puff much harder, thereby almost insuring bite. 2. not tamping frequently enough. As the pipe smokes down, you need to tamp it to keep the tobacco burning. Even once you master these things, the pipe WILL go out from time to time until you get the rhythm down. Don’t worry about it too much, it becomes second nature after a while.