How to chop down a tree with a hand axe?

I noticed recetly, when trying to start a “in the forest” game, that the axe I can craft can’t cut down trees, since they need lvl2 tree cutting tool, and the rustic axe is only lvl1.

What can I do to cut trees wihtout going to a city and finding a better axe there?

In this game, my character can walk for days without finding a single house.

In the latest experimental, you can craft a stone axe so long as you have level 3 survival and level 1 construction, as well as a book containing that recipe. It used to be autolearn, but I guess that changed. That axe has level 2 tree cutting and is the easiest to craft in the forest. There’s also the copper axe that requires level 4 fabrication and level 1 construction, but it takes copper as well as a recipe book.

The stone axe really should be autolearned. That sounds like a developer oversight to me.

They are, it’s just that one of the recent crafting updates must have broken autolearn.