I'm going to focus this post on the steel used to make an axe, but the principles apply to all steel products (like knives) because I'm just going to be talking about the properties of the steel itself. Firstly, I think it's prudent to define what is steel and what is not (i.e. variations, like stainless steel). Steel is a mixture of iron, which is soft yet tough, and carbon, which is very brittle and stiff in most of its many forms (allotropes as scientist like to call them - diamonds, graphite, graphene - they're all pure carbon, but have different molecular structures) and when a small amount of carbon is mixed into iron (~0.5-2%) the resulting mixture is called steel. Stainless steel is very different - it will not corrode as easily, but still corrodes in harsh environments like acidic and basic solutions, it is significantly softer than steel, and it has 10-20% of nickel and/or chromium added to the iron/carbon mixture, which makes it more expensive that regular ...