Timber preparation

thumb|Double- and single-bit felling axesFile:An axe labelled-2edit.svg|thumb|upright|A diagram showing the main points on an axe An axe (; sometimes spelled ax in American English; see spelling differences) is an implement that has been used for thousands of years to shape, split, and cut wood, to harvest timber, and as a weapon. The axe has many forms and specialised uses but generally consists of a head with a sharpened blade (also called a "bit") attached to a handle (also called "haft" or "helve").

thumb|257px|Sawing logs into finished lumber with a basic "portable" sawmill thumb|right|An American sawmill, thumb|Early 20th-century sawmill, maintained at Jerome, Arizona|Jerome, Arizona

thin sheets of wood

thumb|300px|A very large, single-bevel broadaxe

type of saw

thumb|upright|A German carpenter (Zimmerer) hewing a log into a beam. Note the blue chalk line snapped on the log to which the hewer works. thumb| In some medieval Scandinavian buildings a special method of hewing which produces a herringbone pattern on the timbers has been used (Swedish: Slinthuggning, Norwegian: Sprettejling). This is a modern reconstruction in Stråsjö Chapel in Hälsingland, Sweden. thumb|Stråsjö Chapel

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