Here are the images that I’m using as a reference for the top and side.
As you can see, the blade of the axe is convex up until the bevel and the back of the chisel/spike is curved. The way I know how to create the curves right now is by ring cutting a cube many times, then dragging one vertex out with proportional editing on and set to sphere. That works okay for the front of the blade, but it’s not exactly what I want and it simply doesn’t work for the spike or the convex edge.
There are way too many verticies for my taste. I would take advantage of the subsurf to give me some of those curves. But then, I almost never work with high polly models. You could even eliminate some of these verticies if you used Edge crease.
Box modeling is excellent way to go. Or you can play around with making it polygon by polygon like I did here. If you want to control shapes the way you want it, being manually create it is some time faster.
