This is the second in a series of articles on two-man sledge hammer team work.  It was originally published in the UMBA Journal, Volume 16, Issue 6, November-December 1994

 "I regret that I have but one thumb to give for my smithy".

     As Frank Garland mentioned in the first of this serial article on team striking, this is not a definitive summary of classical striking practice, as few of us who will employ team striking in their own shop will be able to train their strikers for years in the complexities of the art.  Not to be deterred by the mere lack of skill and knowledge, this is the striker's side of the story Frank and I developed as an ultimately practical, yet artless version of the thing.
     First a bit of geometry.  Consider the face of your anvil.  Odds are it's at just the right altitude for a one handed swipe landed at a fraction of an inch above the face.  A darn fine height when you consider that this is how most of us work.  The problem is that an optimally powerful long handle stroke finishes with the hands "crotch" high, both knees slightly bent, feet apart, and bent slightly at the waist.  In most cases of non-NBA strikers  this places the hands well below the anvil face.  The resulting angle of impact between hammer face and anvil face would be injurious to the workpiece, the anvil and anyone or thing adverse to a glancing blow from a careening sledge (see Fig. 1.)