If you are looking for the best hatchet, best splitting mauls, most popular camping axe, best multipurpose axe, felling axe, best cutting axe, or the best survival hatchet hope we can help you by giving you some idea.
We have analyzed the top brands of these products as well as the current market demands and listed them all in one place for your convenience. In the end, hope it will be easier for you to choose the right one that suits most to your requirements.
According to the versatile designs, sizes, lengths, appearance, and all other features axes can be categorized in different ways. Few are better for One-Strike splits while few are easier to carry. Few provide the maximum grip to utilize your power efficiently.
So, it depends on the personal preference which one you will choose. Before describing each axe one by one, let’s have a look at the best axe for splitting wood at a glance.
While manufacturing an axe model, manufacturers emphasize a particular side and make it proficient in that particular job. Few are made for splitting wood.
Few works better for chopping trees, bushes, or branches. Some of them are specially made for cutting ice or, fire logs. Different types of axes and their specialities are explained below.
1. Hatchet
Hatchet is mostly the one-handed axe. It can be a better alternative to knives with more functionality. The metal head of the hatchet has two sides; the front side is a sharp blade & the backside works like a hammer.
A backpacking hatchet is essential while travelling into the wilderness. You can’t imagine how many ways it can help you in outdoor scenarios. Hatchet can help you to gather and splitting firewood or to make a better shelter. The best hatchet should be much handy, easier to carry, lighter in weight, shorter in length yet the most effective one.
It can also help you while camping. It’s a better tool for hewing too. So, having a single hatchet is like having a bunch of necessary things together in a single tool!
2. Splitting Axe
Splitting mauls or splitting axes are long-handled axes. According to the name, one can easily determine for what purpose it would be best. The splitting axe is best for splitting wood pieces. Its long arm structure suits best taller people and much popular amongst them.
It can generate tremendous power from its extra swing which can split medium to large-sized wooden logs along its grain comparatively easier than other axes. A fibreglass reinforced handle can give you a stronger build with less weight and more stability while swinging.
Its unique feature permits the blade to disperse wood with less effort. The back part of the splitting axe works like a sledgehammer. It maximizes your power and saves time while splitting wood.
3. Survival Axe
Survival axe basically is a type of hatchet that is most necessary for chopping trees, bushes or branches after natural disasters like, tsunami or tornado.
It is also popular among those who go hunting frequently. For the adventurous soul, who goes to the forest or mountains, Survival Axe is indispensable.
It can support you in any adverse situation while you are hunting or camping.
It also can help you to protect from enemies when you go hunting. Most of the survival axes are moderate-sized, not very much heavy.
So, if you like to go hunting or camping, keep one of these for extra support. There are a lot of Survival hatchets currently in the market. So, before buying the best survival axe, one should check online reviews first.
4. Camping Axe
Camping axe or camp axe is a very popular type of axe. If you like to go camping from time to time, you surely have heard about this camp axe’s name before!
The best camp axe can serve you in different ways while camping. It will help you to gather wood to make a fire or, even can help you to build a suitable tent! Camp axes are not that much bigger or, heavy and generally weigh between 2 to 3 pounds.
So, it is best for carrying it too. The head of that axe is slightly thicker and the customer often finds it easily moveable because, during chopping wood, the edge of the axe gets stuck in the wooden piece halfway through and serves effectively.
You don’t need to be much stronger for using this axe, as it is lighter than other axes and also suitable for teenagers.
5. Ice Axe
An ice axe is totally a different type of axe than any other regular type of axes found in the market. This type of axe is generally used by mountaineers for long hiking and climbing.
While climbing the snowy mountains, alpinists use this tool to cut footholds in the ice, for providing an anchor point, or for controlling a slide in the snow.
It is a multipurpose tool with different styles and holding positions. An ice axe can be used as a walking stick over the snowy mountains. Its metal spike in the lower end helps to keep balance walking on the ice. Its back part of the metal head is Adze, which is used to cut footsteps.
The ice axe mainly helps to self-arrest in a downhill slip. The best ice axe should serve these purposes effectively in your mountain journey!
6. Hand Axe
Handaxe is a type of ordinary axe that can be operated in one hand. It is the most common type of axe found in the market at a low cost.
This type of axe is used for chopping and cutting wood. Generally, it is made of bamboo or wood and iron and can be handled easily by both male and female person.
You can easily find one from the local market but the best hand axe should be made of better quality materials and you should feel comfortable working with it for a long time.
One should not mix it up with a hatchet; hatchets have hammerheads on the backside of its blade whereas, a hand axe’s back is flattened. Although it seems like a very ordinary axe, it can be a very useful tool from time to time.
7. Double Bit Axe
Double bit axe was one of the most common forms of the axe in the ancient world, became popular in America in the 1800s. The axe head has blades on both sides, symmetrical from the centre axis but blade edges are different for use for different purposes.
Generally, one edge is sharpened to thinner angles, which is also called the cutting edge and the other edge kept a little bit blunter, which is used for knots, cutting near the ground or, hacking rocks or hack off the dead branches.
The head is a bit heavier and thus generates power while swings; makes it best for felling & chopping out forest giants. For cutting lumber both the sharp and the blunt edge become useful.
The sharp edge is sharp enough to shape wood for crafts work and furniture making. It’s also popular in woodsman sports for its massive head, better balance, and symmetrical shape.
8. Pick Axe
The pickaxe is another different type of axe with a different head shape. It is a hand tool especially for digging and mostly used by miners and diggers. It looks a little bit thinner than other axes.
The body consists of two parts; the head which is made of metal and the handle. The handle is wooden or metal, sometimes made of fibreglass. The metal head part is curved where one end is a pointed end and another end is a chisel.
The pickaxe is best for cracking stones, rocks, breaking concrete, hardgrounds, and digging soil, etc. The chisel end can help you in cutting roots or some other purposes. Without the metal part, the pickaxe handle alone can be used as a baton and it was officially used in the British Army before.
9. Fire Axe
This type of axe is mostly used for emergency situations or in firefighting operations. It can be seen in high-rise buildings, shopping malls or cruise ships, trains, aeroplanes with other emergency tools like a fire hose or fire extinguisher.
The bulky axe head is generally decorated with vivid colours so that one can easily notice in case of an emergency.
The front side of the blade is the cutting edge with a sharp blade and back is a pointed edge. The fire axe works best for breaking down wooden doors or windows in the rescue operation when someone gets trapped in a building that caught on fire or collapsed due to an unexpected incident.
Although, it is kept unused behind the glass most of the time, could be the lifesaver tool in a critical situation. Fire axe can be ordered online from different online markets that provide firefighters equipment.
10. Broad Axe
Broadaxe is a different kind of axe with an exclusive type of blade. The blade is much wider and heavier than other axes. The axe head has a flat end on the back and bevel edge on the front. Broadaxe is best for hewing, cutting off the round log precisely into square timbers or the high-quality finishing work.
It is generally, suitable for balanced smooth strokes; not recommended for works that require stronger swings. The blade carries most of the weight of the whole axe.
Its unique design specially made for controlled work and makes sensitive tasks more comfortable. As the blade plays a most important role here, the blade should be made of the best quality metals. So, before buying, one should keep this thing in his mind!
11. Tactical Axe
If you are thinking of a versatile tool that can process numerous tasks like removing an obstacle, creating an active entrance, slashing, chopping, digging a ditch or dike, breaching or extraction, removing IEDs, breaking crates, etc. altogether, you are definitely looking for a Tactical Tomahawk.
Simultaneously, a Tactical axe works as a self-defence weapon for survival and to offend your enemy. Its lightweight and advanced structure made it superior for combat strategy; thus, making it most popular in the military and the law enforcement society day by day.
Tomahawks are also best for throwing games too, where the straight handle helps to keep balance while throwing. Its handle is finished with durable and shock absorbing materials like nylon-fibreglass or a paracord wrap. A Tactical Tomahawk axe is the real multipurpose axe.
It’s not that much huge or bulky so that one can easily carry under the coat. Finding out the best tactical tomahawk axe that is suitable to your requirements is not that much difficult if you check online reviews of the product before purchasing.
12. Felling Axe
Specially made for knocking down the trees, a Felling axe is best for cutting across the wood grain. One of the most noticeable differences is on its blade shape; which is extremely sharper and thinner.
The bit is gradually tapered to the edge, allowing one to push deeper into the grains of wood while striking. In spite of being thinner, the axe head is made with heavier metal to generate the force on strokes for the sake of removing bigger chunks while feeling down trees.
Although mid-sized handles (28” to 31”) are available in the market, most of the felling axes have longer handles (36”). We do not encourage deforestation but, using a felling axe to knock down trees is a fun, much comfortable and less time consuming too.
Several renowned brands are currently manufacturing the best quality felling axes which are more durable and considerably effective for felling trees.
13. Chopping Axe
It’s way simpler to identify its job by the name; a chopping axe can help you to chop up wood easier than ever. Don’t get confused, a chopping axe and a splitting axe are totally made for different purposes with different features.
While splitting wood, wood logs should be placed vertically to your strikes. But, for chopping, wood logs are placed perpendicular to your strokes.
Chopping axe is extensively used to slice down the wood fibre instead of splitting them vertically. The chopping axe maintains the perfect shape of wood when chopping.
To make it suitable for chopping up, the best chopping axe makers use advanced blade geometry with an ultra-sharp edge. Modern chopping axes are not that much heavier so, it won’t bother you when you need to carry!
How To Sharpen An Axe
Axe needs to be sharpened before taking it for further work because without sharpening, the blunt axe can’t be used for further chores. However, there are several steps for sharpening an axe. In case of any damage, the best way to sharpen an axe is that it should be filed down with an emery wheel but make sure that the steels are not over tempered.
After that, it needs to be cool down. Remember that the shape of the edge should not change and you need to be very much careful while grinding it. In order to make the cutting age keener, it can be stropped against a piece of leather after honing.
However, the design of the axe body mainly relies on its area of use. People have to give more concentration on it because without sharpening an axe becomes blunt and no one can use it in their work for cutting anything.
There are some highly professional people who can do this job properly and also there are some other shops that sharpen the axe. Therefore, if you are not highly skilled in this job don’t take a risk and may communicate with those professionals to make your axe sharp.
How To Sharpen An Axe
Important Feature Of Axe If You Are Going To Buy
In order to buy an axe, which is most important for the customer is to go through axe reviews regarding the quality of the axe as well as the best axe currently available in the market. The next important decision relies on the purpose of which you are interested to buy an axe.
There is a different high-quality axe and among them, hatchet and splitting axes are now ranking in top position in the axe market. It doesn’t matter colour or size but, shapes may matter much in that case.
For example, for chopping wood, a tough and big-sized axe is essential whereas, for hunting, too big doesn’t make any sense moreover, it must not be too heavy; otherwise, the extra weight could be a burden, which can create problems during hunting.
Today’s customers demand some lucrative and stylish axe in the market and for your kind information, axe producers are now trying to produce newer and easily carriable axes; suitable for backpacking, in order to grab the attention of the mass people and also to influence them for buying axe.
You can get stainless steel or a wooden axe but, you might get confused with such different qualities of the axe. What you need to know is, in what purpose you are going to use this tool, and then, you can easily purchase it according to your demand.
Why Use High-Quality Axe
The use of axe is very much clear to us. That’s why customers generally demand high-quality axe while going to shop. Basically, different axes are used for different purposes. There are hand axe, survival axe, camp axe, hatchet, splitting axe etc.
In that case, the best axe is highly required to do a particular job perfectly. So, the demand for the best axe in the customers is always in the top position.
Read More: Best Survival Knife Sharpener
To be perfect or maintain high-quality work, it is needed to have a good quality axe. As an example, we can consider a woodcutter, who cuts wood by his axe and his livelihood condition greatly depends on it. In that case, he needs perfection in his work; otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to earn well for his faulty and imperfect job.
We can also think of chopping wood, which greatly requires a high-quality axe; without this, it is difficult to get wood of the same size and shapes.
Most importantly, customer greatly demands some best axe while going for hunting. In that case, survival axe needs to be perfect & multi-functional so that hunters can get supports from it. Or, they may endanger their life due to fault in their weapon. I Hope, this can give some good sense regarding the necessity of having a good quality axe in different works.
The Best axes Brand
Whether or not you are living in the mountains, you need to have an axe in every step of your life. Having an axe makes life more comfortable and easier. It can also give occupation to an unemployed person. Different branded axes are now available for multi-purpose use.
Well, you need to have a clear understanding of different types of axes first and after that consider its brand. Finally, you have to make a decision on which brand and model is preferable to you.
For example, we can consider Fiskars X27; which is a splitting axe with an extra-large size. It has the longest handle and if you want to split wood logs, it can make your job easier. Let’s think about the Husqvarna axe, a curved handle multi-purpose axe with more usability and high performance.
As it is widely used in the industry; Estwing E45A is a metal handle axe, made with solid steels. It is the world’s one of the most durable and comfortable axes which reduce the time during work and mostly used for construction purposes.
In that way, considering different axes like a hatchet, splitting axe, felling axe, tactical axe, Hudson Bay axe, broad axe, carpenter’s axe etc. For these, different axes are now available from renowned brands. You have to choose among them according to your requirement.
How To Buy The Best Axe
It completely depends on your knowledge and ability while you are thinking and making the decision to buy an axe. The best axe normally means an axe with higher quality than from the same axe with lower quality.
For example, you certainly have some knowledge regarding the axe described above with their corresponding qualities but without having such knowledge when you are going to buy an axe you will certainly be misguided and there are immense possibilities that you will buy an axe with lower quality builds and performance.
You can gather knowledge about a high-quality axe from the internet and can go to buy an axe. In that case, there is a lower probability that you would not identify the best axe and buy a poor quality one.
Most of the axe sold in the market have a wooden handle but, you have to make assure that there are some other axes with high branded and some improved quality features, and reviewing such features may help to get the best axe.
There are also different review sites regarding axe reviews, an axe for sale, high-quality axe and best hatchet currently available and if you want you can bookmark this page that may help you to get an idea regarding different types of axes and their high-quality features which may also help you to get the high-quality axe.
Surely, you can have a clear idea regarding the use of different axes with different shapes, sizes, colours, and qualities. You can choose any of them according to your demand. First thing you have to remember that what portion of money from your pocket you want to spend on it.
After that, you have to be concerned about the purpose of work and then can consult with the axe seller who may help you to choose the right one. For a newcomer, this article tries to provide a clear-cut review of the axe, its uses, and its advantages.
Hope we have helped you to know different things about axes from here and might not get dissatisfied at all!