The adze is a wonderful tool. I have a number of them, from the cooper's trussing, two sculptor's adzes, several foot adzes, a couple of shipwright's adzes, and even a gutter adze (shaped like a giant gouge, for carving out wooden gutters). Once spent 14 days with a foot adze, 7 hr per day, working beams for a new building that had to duplicate the 1930s beams in the main house.
Before the invention of the plane, the adze was the tool used for smoothing wood. There's a drawing of a Greek carpenter (from an ancient Greek ceramic) that shows him using a rather light adze to smooth a piece of wood. There is a thong attached to the adze that is tied to his shoulder to contain the arc of the swing so that each stroke is consistent.
