60 Cool Axe Tattoo Designs for Men

A symbol of more than just manual labor, the axe is a representation of the wild world as it was once carved out by man.

Chopping wood, tending to the fires, and building his empire from the forest floor up are all poignant connotations carried by the axe.

On an even deeper and less obvious level, the axe has also come to denote a parting of ways with the world as it was once known, a severing of ties and restraints. “Woodcutter, cut my shadow from me” the great poet Pablo Neruda once wrote; the man who wears the axe tattoo has surely requested the same in his own way.

Often inked in black and white Victorian “catalog” script, the axe obviously lends itself to vintage nostalgia. However, tattoo designs can be updated to include the many colors and adjacent symbols of the modern man’s era. Dramatically inked over the heart or encased in the upper arm, the axe tattoo is more than just a nod to a bygone tool, but the kind of man who commands respect with his bare hands.

Perhaps he too has parted ways with old facets of himself and a life that no longer serves him, and so his tattoo is a message to all that when building from the ground up, there is no looking down or back.