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.
an axlike tool, for dressing timbers roughly, with a curved, chisellike steel head mounted at a right angle to the wooden handle.
to dress or shape (wood) with an adz.
Historical Examples

The side-room doors were neatly paneled, though all the lumber had been nibbled into shape with a small narrow Indian adze.
Travels in Alaska John Muir

Let us see: Suppose an adze were handed to a carpenter for him to square a beam with it.
Foma Gordyeff Maxim Gorky

He who guides it is never without his adze with which to cut the roots which he finds as the plow passes.
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 Various

Chipping it with an adze, and boring it with an augur, to ascertain its quality.
The Sailor’s Word-Book William Henry Smyth

The German carpenters, as we see, are reducing a great slab of wood into shape by the saw and the adze.
Knowledge is Power: Charles Knight

They are not very heavy, and not so much of a load as your sledge-hammer and adze.
In The Saddle Oliver Optic

You cannot so easily overcome them with sharp retort as with adze and yardstick.
Around The Tea-Table T. De Witt Talmage

I can manage all that, sir, if I may take an axe or two and an adze from the shop here.
Captain Sam George Cary Eggleston

I am a carpenter to trade, as was St Joseph of old; and I handle the hatchet and adze, for your benefit.
Economic Sophisms Frederic Bastiat

Tepa was applied to, who got the axe restored but the adze was not recovered.
A Voyage to the South Sea William Bligh

noun
a heavy hand tool with a steel cutting blade attached at right angles to a wooden handle, used for dressing timber
n.

also adz, Middle English adese, adse, from Old English adesa “adze, hatchet,” of unknown origin, perhaps somehow related to Old French aisse, Latin ascia “axe” (see ax). Spelling with -z- is from 18c. Adze “has been monosyllabic only since the seventeenth century. The word has no cognates, though it resembles the names of the adz and the hammer in many languages” [Liberman, 2008].
advise (shortwave transmission)