Iron Axe

Early iron has a queue of better uses and an axe is rarely at the front of it. If the world handed you a workable axe in a surface chest, keep swinging that and put the bars into an anvil, a bucket and armor first. Wood only becomes a real bottleneck once you start building properly, and by then you usually have something better lined up. Journey characters start with this in place of the copper one, so the question only comes up on a classic world.

There is an actual decision here. The speed modifiers make it chop faster, which is what you want if this is a tool. The damage modifiers tune it for hitting things, which only matters in the opening hours before you have a real weapon. Pick for the job you bought it for, and do not pay twice trying to get both.