You have gone to build something a bit nicer, a proper roof, a bow, maybe your first boat, and the recipe wants 
Fine wood. So you walk up to the nearest big tree, take a swing, and the axe just bounces off. Everyone hits this wall. Here is what is actually going on and every way around it.
Only two trees give Fine wood
Ordinary trees give you plain 
Wood. Fine wood comes from exactly two species, and learning to spot them at a glance saves a lot of wasted swinging.
Birch are the slim pale ones with almost white bark. They stand out against everything else in the Meadows, especially in fog. They are the common source and the ones you will fell most often.
Oak are the giants. Thick trunk, huge spreading canopy, and you will not mistake one for anything else once you have seen it. A single oak drops a serious pile of Fine wood plus a stack of ordinary wood, so it is worth going out of your way for one.
The normal way: a bronze axe
Birch and oak are both hard enough that a stone axe or a 
Flint axe does nothing at all to them. You need a 
Bronze axe or better. That is the gate, and for most players it means the Black Forest, copper, tin and a forge come first.
Once you are swinging bronze it stops being a problem entirely. Find a patch of Meadows with a few birch standing close together and work through them, then keep an eye out for oaks as you travel. One good session sets you up for a long time.
How to get it before you have bronze
Here is the part most guides leave out. Your axe is not the only thing in the world that can damage a tree. Anything that deals damage counts, and that opens up two ways past the gate entirely.
Let a troll swing at it
Trolls hit hard enough to hurt trees you cannot touch. Find one in the Black Forest, get its attention, then put a birch or an oak directly between the two of you. It swings at you, misses, and takes a chunk out of the trunk instead. Keep circling so it keeps swinging into the same tree and eventually the tree comes down.
Free Fine wood, courtesy of something that was trying to kill you. Just never let it back you into a corner, because the swing that fells a tree does roughly the same to a Viking.
Roll trees into each other
This one works in the Meadows on day one with nothing but a stone axe. A falling trunk is a solid object, and it damages whatever it lands on. So use that:
- Find a birch with ordinary trees standing near it.
- Chop an ordinary tree so it topples into the birch. The birch takes the hit.
- Fell the next one into it, then roll the loose trunks into it as well.
- Keep going. The birch takes damage every time and eventually shatters into Fine wood.
It is slow and faintly ridiculous, but if you want a finewood bow long before you have touched bronze, it genuinely works.
What to spend it on first
Once it is flowing, the first things worth building are a finewood bow, a proper roof, and then portals, which are the single biggest quality of life jump in the game. If you have not set those up yet, read how to make a portal next.
Happy building!
