Axe

Axes are tools used to ease the process of collecting wood based items.

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.

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 wood 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 different quality axes perform.

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 take 2 damage 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.

Console and Pocket editions
In the Console and Pocket editions, axes always attack instantly, and do not do as much damage as a sword:

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.

Trivia

 * In the language files, axes are referred to as Hatchets.