A few years ahead of me in high school, the wrestling team had a one-handed wrestler. A friend of mine on the wrestling team told me it was because the guy was helping a guy make a pipe bomb, using a hammer and a wooden dowel to pack match heads in a pipe. One guy was holding the pipe, and the other was swinging the hammer.
it depends if they're strike anywhere or safety matches. making them with strike anywhere will probably just blow up while you're making it. safety matches can be compressed like crazy, I heard.
They can be compressed like crazy, but that sensitivises them for strikes. My father told me about this method - get some match heads into a nut, screw it tightly with two screws, tie a string and use that string to accelerate into some hard object. Luckily, no one got hit by exploding screws.
Supposedly a wild strike caused the steel hammer to strike the steel pipe and spark, and there was a narrow flammable channel next to the dowel leading to the main charge.
