Axe

Axes are tools used to ease the process of

Mobs
A vindicator spawns with an iron axe, and has a 8.5% (9.5% with Looting I, 10.5% with Looting II and 11.5% with Looting III) chance of dropping it upon death by player. It will usually have some level of damage, and will not be enchanted. However in Bedrock Edition, the iron axe will sometimes be enchanted.

Trading
Weapon Smith villagers sell iron axes for 6–8 emeralds as one of their initial tier trades, and enchanted diamond axes for 9–12 emeralds as one of their third tier trades. The enchantments will be the same as might be obtained from an enchantment table at levels 5–19.

Natural generation
In woodland mansions, a room can appear that has a chest always containing an Efficiency I iron axe.

Chopping wood
An ахе is used to break logs and blocks derived from it faster than by using other tools. An axe uses 1 durability to break a block. For blocks that break instantly, it uses 0 durability.

Speed and durability
The following table summarizes the speed at which axes of different qualities perform.

Stripped logs/wood
an axe on a log or wood block will cause it to become a stripped log or a stripped wood block, respectively. This will consume one durability from the axe.

Java Edition
Damage done when using an axe as a weapon is more than that of a sword, though they take longer than a sword to recover. Axes lose 2 points of durability when used as a weapon, and deal different amount of damage and have different cooldown times based on the type:

Disabling a shield
Attacking a shield user with an axe has a chance to disable the use of the shield for 5 seconds. The base chance is 25%, plus 5 percentage points per level of Efficiency on the axe, plus 75 percentage points if attacking while sprinting.

Legacy Console and Bedrock editions
In the Bedrock and Legacy Console editions, axes always attack instantly (without a cooldown) and do less damage than a sword of the same quality:

Enchantments
An axe can receive the following enchantments:


 * Fortune
 * Silk Touch
 * Efficiency
 * Unbreaking
 * Sharpness
 * Smite
 * Bane of Arthropods
 * Mending
 * Curse of Vanishing

Fuel
Wooden axes can be used as a fuel in furnaces, smelting 1 item per axe.

Video
Note: This video is outdated, since as of 15w34c axes actually deal more damage than a sword.

Trivia

 * Before 1.13, in the language files, axes were referred to as Hatchets.