Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 398
-
Kevin Godbee - Apr 28, 2020
- 1 min read
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 398! Our featured interview tonight is with Robert “Lawdog” Lawing. Lawdog is a well-known, easily recognizable figure at all of the pipe shows around the country. He specializes in the estate market for high-end artisan pipes – restoring, buying and selling. He also does restorations for any type of pipe. In Pipe Parts, Brian will discuss tongue bite, and how to avoid it. Sit back, relax with your pipe, and enjoy The Pipes Magazine Radio Show!
Use our player above – or – Choose one of the Apps below.
 |
 |
 |
 |
The Pipes Magazine Radio Show features interviews with pipe makers, tobacco blenders, pipe and tobacco aficionados, collectors, and more. Episodes air every Tuesday.
Our show is sponsored by SmokingPipes.com, Cornell & Diehl, Missouri Meerschaum, Savinelli Pipes and Tobaccos. Please give them some consideration when making your next pipe or tobacco purchase.
We hope you enjoy our 1-hour show produced just for you—the pipe smoker and collector.
Robert “Lawdog” Lawing Interview
Written by Kevin Godbee
More Pipes and Tobaccos Articles
3 Responses
Recent Posts
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 658. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Bo Parker. Bo is the new co-host of the Pipe and Tamper Podcast, which is the second longest running pipe podcast after this one. Bo started as the co-host in January 2025, and he is also a member of the Heretics Pipe Club. He is a professional coffee roaster and has the best “first time I smoked a pipe story” ever. At the top of the show, we will have another edition of the virtual tour of Brian’s pipe collection with four more Smio Satou pipes.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 657. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Ben Smith of Redeemed Pipes. Ben is a pipe restorer, buyer and seller. He helps collectors find the estate pipes they are looking for. He started Redeemed Pipes in 2022 at his first Chicago pipe show. He deals with all types of pipes from artisan to factory-made. He actually started smoking pipes in 2017, and soon became obsessed, and quickly progressed to collecting artisan pipes himself. At the top of the show Brian will discuss “Estate Pipe Buying 101”.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 656. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Nate King, the “King of Pipes” and of In-N-Out Burger. Most people know of Nate as an excellent pipe artisan. He also has an honorary Master of Pipes degree from the Chicagoland Pipe Collectors Club, and is a member of the prestigious Confrérie des Maitres Pipiers de Saint-Claude. Prior to becoming a pipe maker in 2005, Nate worked in the Indy race business as a transmission specialist. At the top of the show Brian will have a tobacco review of Low Country Atalaya. It is a Virginia/Perique blend made in the Cornell & Diehl factory.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 655. Our featured interview tonight is with Mike Morales. Mike showed up at the Vegas pipe show last year with a bunch of professional video equipment and spontaneously arranged interviews with show exhibitors and Brian. The video he produced was at a professional level of a TV show, so Brian had to have him on the show. Mike is a pipe smoking enthusiast that is quite intrigued with the community aspect and history of pipe smoking. He is on a journey to devour as much of this information and experience as possible. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Ahh, Spring has sprung! Cherry blossoms are sprouting into bloom, the weather is giving some of us a bit of relief (looking at you, allergies). But there is also the other side—the, uh, spring cleaning side. I’m talking pipe herd spring cleaning, of course. Over the years, the herd has become unruly and very inconsiderate. Pipes seem to arrive and begin elbowing for a spot in the numerous pipe rack stalls. So, I began a long journey this current spring to shoo away the unwanted, weed out the ugly growths, and start afresh. Dear friends, there are hundreds in the herd! See, Pundit began his pipe smoking journey and pursuit of happy hobby hunting in college. I admired my pipe-puffing erudite English Lit professors, the fuzzy history profs, and pomp and circumstance philosopher profs, one of whom entered the classroom, smoking a pipe and reciting “ Sic Parvis Magna,” or another of his favorite Latin phrases. I always loved hearing that prof walking in from the back of the classroom and spouting over his clenched pipe, that Latin phrase “greatness from small beginnings.” What wasn’t so much fun arrived at the end of a year-long study of Shakespeare. The Shakespearean scholar teaching the class penned a note at the end of the single exam we had all year, “Deus vobiscum,” God be with you. English Lit majors had to make a B or higher on the exam in order not to repeat the year-long study of The Bard. I was in my senior year, as were most of the Lit majors. Repeating the year was not the best of outcomes. I digress. Back to the herd. In all my searching, I always wanted to find an estate pipe carved and created (ahem, like me, of course) in my birth year. Now, we won’t go into the actual birth date itself, but let’s just say it ranges around World War II. I never found that estate pipe, but the herd is full of old and dated versions around that birth year. Some very new herd additions help ease that search. There are so many old memories and stories surrounding the ancients, though. One quick one for you. This happened on a beautiful catch-and-release Ozark Mountain river stream along the Missouri and Arkansas border. The stream was one of those mystical waters. Mists floating off the morning current whets the imagination in anticipation of mayflies or caddisflies emerging from larvae to pupae, rising to the surface, drying its wings and taking flight in a new form, promising me greatness from their small beginnings. I was enjoying my pipe, casting for wild trout when I heard a shout behind me. It originated from a rock-dimpled canoe. A large bearded fellow slapped the paddle beside me as the entourage of two bearded guys and two bathing suit clad ladies floated by. The loud smack on the water scattered the trout, ending fly fishing on that stretch. Time to retreat. As I slowly backed upstream, keeping an eye on the dented canoe, it crunched ashore on a nearby sandy stretch. The bearded guy in front got out and as one of the ladies was emerging, he snatched off the top of her bathing suit. I sped up my retreat as the shouting began. In the melee, I dropped my pipe into the stream, but quickly retrieved it with my fishing net. Pipes always produce the best memories and stories. Pipe Smokers of the Past: Albert Einstein, Mr. E=mc2 was born March 14, 1879, and died April 18, 1955. He was a celebrated theoretical physicist and pipe smoker, and seldom seen without his pipe and puffy plumes of Revelation tobacco floating above his bristly bushy head of hair. I never think of the future. It comes soon enough—Albert Einstein Albert King, Mississippi blues man, and guitar master, was born in Indianola, Miss., April 25, 1923, and died Dec. 21, 1992, in Memphis, Tenn. He was known as “King of the Blues Guitar,” and sometimes, “King of the Pipe,” since he often smoked his pipe while playing a blues gig. Rose Kiser has an excellent biography of King and his love of pipes in a Nov. 10, 2023, Pipe Line column at SmokingPipes.com. A quote from one of his blues songs: All your loneliness I’ll try to soothe, I’ll play the blues for you—Albert King, “I’ll Play the Blues for You”. A parting shot: Pipes provide us with fond farewells in our memory. They have been friends and family, there for all the happy times as well as the difficult days, as we all experience. It’s sad to see some leave the fold, but there are fresh rose-tipped horizons to be seen with a new kid joining the beloved herd.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 654. Our featured interview tonight is with Rich Esserman. Rich is one of our regular guests that has been on the show many times, and is returning after a one-year hiatus. Rich has penned innumerous articles about pipes and tobacco for several publications, and he is known for collecting quite large pipes. We’ll get caught up with Rich and see what’s new with him. At the top of the show in our Pipe Parts segment Brian will talk about the “Delayed Gratification Technique” or “DTG” as we call it in the forums.
I really enjoyed all aspects of this week’s show.
I think people, sometimes, mistake the tang of a good Virginia for tongue bite. And, if I’m smoking something that I know might get too hot, I always have an iced drink to ease the sting.
Lawdog was thoroughly entertaining. The Piston was terrific.
I, too, loved the “God Friended Me” show. It was an incredible ensemble of actors, who portrayed characters who were, as you said, nice. I never missed an episode. TV will be less rich now that it is gone.
Thanks,
Dino
Great show, Brian, I’m a pipe maker myself, and I always enjoy listening to other pipe maker speak about their contributions to our hobby. Your advice about tongue bite was spot on. Greg Pease brings up a chemistry aspects to tongue bite, that when tobacco burns too hot, it raises the PH and can actually cause an alkaline chemical burn. I’ve been smoking a pipe since 1979, and for the first ten years, tongue bite was a consert companion of mine. I was smoking aromatics right out of the pouch or can, and constantly had problems with the pipe gurgling and biting my tongue. I was also dumping the ash constantly throughout the bowl, and ending up with a a quarter bowl of gooey dottle. I had an ‘old timer’, an English expat that had lived in South Africa for the previous forty years (Gerry Gore), step in and school me. He steered me away from the aromatic blends, and into the Virginia, VaPer, and English blends. He told me that almost all tobacco is shipped at a moisture level that is great for storing and aging the tobacco, but too wet for smoking. So I started spreading my tobacco out on a piece of paper and letting it dry before smoking it, if it needed it. It’s perfect when it’s still pliable, but not sticking together when pinched. It should not feel cold to the touch. He said the perfect smoke is all about temperature control. He explained that the tampped ash, creates an insulation layer on top of the tobacco, that helps to regulate the temperature. It also defuses the flame to allow relighting the last quarter of the bowl. Otherwise, it will light only the bit that is over the air hole. I became an ash tamper, rather than an ash dumper, and smoking successfully all the to the bottom. I’m happy to say, that his advice kept me in the hobby. I was on the verge of throwing in the towel at the time, and I’ve now been overwhelmingly tongue bite free from the past thirty years. I pass on what I learned from this gentleman every chance I get. It’s invaluable knowledge that we who are now old timers, owe to the new pipe smokers (pay it forward). I still get bit once in a blue moon, but a certain amount goes with the territory. It really only happens when I get careless, and let things heat up.
As always, a great show. Wonderful pipe parts that hopefully lots of new smokers hear. You answered some very often repeated questions. Wonderful interview with Lawdog, as expected. He’s always easy and pleasant to talk to. I’m glad he discussed the rounding of the tenon end of stems on restorations. Nothing drives me crazier than seeing this on estate pipes. It’s nice that someone takes the job so seriously.
Finally, thank you for reminding people to shop around instead of attending the Chicago pipe show. As retailers and pipe makers, a lot of our income, if not a majority, comes from these shows. While I did not make nearly what I would have in sales, I was very happy when some customers pointed out that they were waiting to see me in Chicago and made purchases on my website over the weekend. It brought a little joy to my weekend.