The 7 Best Axes and Hatchets for Frontiersmen and City Guys Alike

There are some expensive axes on this list. Like anything that's both an everyday tool and a work of ancient craftsmanship, you can get sucked deep into the world of hand-forged steel and linseed-oiled hickory handles. And while those are objectively better axes, not everyone needs to buy one of those. Before we show them to you, here's an option for the guy who just needs to split wood for his first winter.

Fiskars makes modern, functional axes that'll chop wood well and hold up with minimal to no maintenance. This splitting ax is a great entry point into the world of axes. It's harp and heavy enough that you can trust it to actually split wood, but it's not at such a high price point that you'll have to get creative with the rent payment. Buy it with two-day shipping on Amazon, or hop down to you local Ace, which will definitely have it on hand.

My brother-in-law and I are in a cold war over this ax. He heats his Michigan home with a wood stove and spends summer and fall splitting and storing wood in preparation for the long winter. I lent him this Swedish Hults Bruk ax when I went to Indonesia for a year, figuring it would be better for it to see use than sit in a storage unit.

I've been back for more than five years, and he's yet to return it. I get it. This is a workhorse of an ax: American-hickory handle and a 4.5-pound, hand-forged Swedish-steel ax-head. It has the weight and length to compete with a splitting ax but the versatility (and sharpness) to handle felling trees or practice a standing chop. If I could have only one ax, it would be this one. I've just got to get mine back.

There are a lot of traditional-leaning hatchets out there, but I'd argue that you're better served by getting a forest ax than a hatchet if you want traditional wood and steel. It'll do everything a hatchet can plus a ton more.

But that doesn't mean you should abandon the smaller tool. I like this backcountry-oriented design from Gerber. It's got a sharp, corrosion-resistant head with a hammer. But it's also got some sneaky modern features like an ergonomic grip and a hidden waterproof compartment for dry tinder, a mini lighter, and a few inches of paracord. Some real James Bond shit, though decidedly less elegant. I like this so much I ordered the brand's smaller Pack hatchet for backcountry excursions where size and weight are a factor.

Another mention of my brother-in-law; this one is more generous. This Gränfors Bruk splitting ax was a wedding present (alongside a very nice bottle of Glenmorangie) from him. It was also probably a ploy to get me to contribute to his household firewood economy. But what a ploy. This is a hefty, Swedish-made splitting ax of serious prowess. I prefer it to a maul, though sometimes the blunted force-to-weight ratio of a splitting maul is necessary. But with enough practice and tact, this splitting ax can handle 90 percent of what a maul could do. That's thanks to the 3.5-pound wedge-shaped heads designed for splitting and a steel collar to reduce damage from over-strikes. At six-foot-one, I'm debating swapping in a longer handle, but it's been nine years of using it as is without too much complaint.

I've been following the Best Made revival with great interest. Founder Peter Buchan-Smith literally wrote the book on axes. He's also documenting his repurchase and revival of his ax and clothing company in a newsletter called Small Big Things—one of the more worthy reads on today's Internet. For the Phantom, Best Made resurrected a heritage ax pattern called the Rockaway, famous in ax-history circles but seldom reproduced today, and partnered with a forge in Indiana to bring it back to life. It's a four-pound carbon-steel head with an Appalachian-hickory handle. Beautiful enough for a museum or a mantle piece, it's priced accordingly. But despite its design prowess, this a tool. A living piece of history, but one you can still use.

You'll notice more than a few Swedish axes on this list. That's no joke. The Scandinavians writ large have made an art form out of chopping and stacking wood. There's a very good book about it. This forestry ax by Hults Bruk is the kind of thing you see Alone contestants building shelter with. Thanks to a long, rounded head and a flatter, elongated blade, this ax is specially designed to cut across the grain of the wood fibers. That's useful when felling, limbing, and chopping and less for log splitting, where the ax travels parallel to the wood grain. But don't worry, I've split plenty of kindling with this too. More versatile and more fun to use than a hatchet.

It wouldn't be Esquire if we didn't get worldly and esoteric... Japanese-style hatchets look more like giant butcher knives for stumps than our Western idea of a woodsman's tool. But man are they functional. We have a wood fireplace in our house—soon, hopefully, to upgrade to a wood stove—and most of the winter, you'll find me splitting kindling with this little number from Barebones. Scary sharp out of the box, it's easy to keep honed and functional. A full-tang, seven-inch blade splits with ease and also handles a fair amount of yard work. And it's way more fun than a tree trimmer. Think of this as the child of a hatchet and a machete. Endlessly useful, especially with a belt sheath.

If you've never bought, much less swung, an ax before, this can be confusing. A hatchet is easy to identify, but for the sake of service, here's a quick rundown of the three types of ax you'll encounter:

Splitting Ax: Made for splitting wood along the grain. The head is typically going to be heavier and more wedge-shaped. If you're chopping wood to warm your home, cook pizzas, or smoke ribs, this is what you need.

Forest Ax: This is the versatile one you lug into the backcountry. It's a bit more compact than the other two, a master-of-none tool. It can definitely take some limbs. It can fell smaller trees. And it can split some lighter logs.

Felling Ax: This is the old-school Paul Bunyan shit. It's made to cut wood perpendicular to the grain. It'll be a tad lighter than a splitting ax, since you're swinging horizontally, but it's longer and more unwieldy than a forest ax. The blade is narrower and sharper.