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a good axe for roughing out staves?

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Shawn Rackley:
At one time I had the fiskars hatchet like that, not sure of the model or length, and I never used it to work on a bow (haven't built one yet). But I thought it was a very sturdy tool, and easy to get scary sharp. I actually almost cut my thumb off with it. Lol, alas, someone stole it.  I can't attest to it's use in this particular scenario. But I can say it's tough, I beat mine to death before it got stolen.

OTDEAN:
Gransfor Bruks everytime.  Last a life time and hardly ever needs to be sharpened if looked after.  Worth the investment.

TorstenT:
In my (limited) experience, axes or hatchets with symmetrical cross sections tend to either bounce of or go in too deep. I’d recommend an asymmetrically shaped axe head. We call those ‘carpenter’s axe’ in Germany. They look like this:

stuckinthemud:
They're called 'side-axe' in the UK; I am mixed-handed, so I said to a tool maker (I'm saving hard, he hand forges beautiful axes) that maybe I'd need a left- and a right-handed axe, but he suggested an easily removed wedge in the handle to allow the head to be quickly removed, flpped over and re-attached, so one head can be both left and right-handed.

Taxus brevifolia:
You can use a cheap p.o.s. hatchet, but get the correct grind. Depending on if left or right handed. When your hatchet strikes wood, the inside edge, the one that's toward the wood, should have a longer sharper bevel, while the edge facing away from the wood should have a shorter steeper bevel.

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