Thanks dkunkler.  I thought that I had tried everything.

The two-sided taper, far then near, is the most efficient way of isolating an exact volume of material and displacing that volume into a bar, taper, or reverse taper with your hand hammer and anvil that I have ever seen. I'm sure that it was a common method all through history, but I had never seen it done before. It is one of the first techniques that I'll encourage people to try and accomplish in a class. It will lead you on to more things like tongs, hardware, and knives. Being able to isolate and work your material before it fits across you anvil and maintain good structure will speed your work up tremendously. There are a few videos that we put on YouTube that show this technique, and then there is the four-sided taper over the far and near side of the anvil shown in the tong video that helps you displace material. Maintaining and controlling the structure of your material while leaving material isolated on the far end and not having to cut your material and turn it around to work it with tongs will save time and you'll stop having the stress fractures that occur from going too far too fast while you still have more work to do.