Lead Axe

An axe at this tier handles ordinary trees fine and starts to drag the moment you point it at anything dense. If bars are spare it is a genuine step up from hacking at trunks with the copper one, but bars usually want to be a pickaxe first, and the axe you actually keep long term is a hamaxe or the chainsaw later.

Reforge for speed, not damage. Nobody fights with an axe, and the fast end of the modifier list takes real time off a wood run when you are gathering by the hundred.