Zax

A zax is a type of axe or hatchet used by a roofer, more specifically a slater, who covers roofs with slate. It might also be called a slate cleaver, slate trimmer or pronounced as saxe and comes from the old English word seax, meaning knife, which in turn is from the word for cut of Germanic origin.

The tool is designed with a blade on one side, off-set from the handle to trim or cut slates to size and is therefore a handed tool left or right depending on the user. It also has a sharp point normally in the centre of the blade but pointing in the opposite direction, which is used to make punctuations for the nails and fixings. The tool is often used together with a slater’s anvil, bench iron or any solid surface, as a working surface to trim the sheets of natural slate to size. Other tools commonly used by slater's, but also other types of roofers are a slater's hammer, a slate ripper and a slate guilotine.

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