A standard pickaxe, similar to a "pick mattock", has a pointed end on one side of its head and a broad flat "axe" blade opposite.The Oxford Dictionary of English states that both pick and pickaxe have the same meaning, that being a tool with a long handle at right angles to a curved iron or steel bar with a point at one end and a chisel or point at the other, used for breaking up hard ground or rock.In The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, pick handles were used against migrant farmers, and Georgia governor Lester Maddox famously threatened to use a similar, more slender axe handle to bar blacks from entering a whites-only restaurant in the heated days of the American civil rights movement of the 1960s.[5] A normal pickaxe handle is made of ash or hickory wood and is about 3 ft (91 cm) and weighs about 2.5 lb (1.1 kg).British Army pickaxe handles must, by regulation, be exactly 3 ft (91 cm) long, for use in measuring in the field.
Illustration of pickaxe handles being combined with riot shields