Pickaxe

Pickaxes, often abbreviated as pick, are used to mine any type of ore in Gielinor. Pickaxes can either be held in your inventory or wielded; but, to wield a pickaxe, your attack level must be high enough to wield a weapon of the same metal as your pickaxe. Wielding your pickaxe provides extra space in your inventory so you can hold more items. This is useful when mining for a profit, as one extra ore can be held.

Maintenance
In the past, players would need to repair their pickaxe only if it had been damaged during the exploding rock random event. In this situation, players would have to visit Nurmof in the Dwarven Mine or Bob at the Lumbridge axe shop to repair it for a small cost. Players used to find their Pickaxe head flying off their handle. Players then needed to pick up their pickaxe head and join it to the handle.

However, pickaxes no longer get damaged or lose their heads, due to the removal of the exploding rock random event, as well as pickaxe heads flying off.

Smithing
After completion of the Perils of Ice Mountain quest, players can smith their own pickaxes, using 2 bars of the desired metal. Required smithing levels are as follows:

In-game

 * Pickaxe (Class 1)
 * Pickaxe (Class 2)
 * Pickaxe (Class 3)
 * Pickaxe (Class 4)
 * Pickaxe (Class 5)

Rewards

 * Volatile pickaxe
 * Sacred clay pickaxe

Dragon pickaxe
The Dragon pickaxe was released alongside the quest Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf on Wednesday the 9th of September 2009. Completion of the quest is not required to use the pickaxe. It is currently the best pickaxe within RuneScape. The only monsters that drop the pickaxe are Chaos dwogres and Chaos dwarf hand cannoneers. However, the drop rate is extremely rare. The Dragon pickaxe is by far the most expensive pickaxe, selling for millions on the GE.

Trivia

 * In the early days of Runescape Classic, there was only one type of pickaxe available, named simply Pickaxe. It looked like a Steel pickaxe and could not be equipped. When different types of pickaxes were released in May 2003, all Pickaxes held or in the bank became the Bronze pickaxes that are commonly found today.
 * Due to complaints, and new random events, a pickaxe can no longer lose its head.
 * There is no black pickaxe, though other families of tools have black in between steel and mithril such as the black hatchet.
 * There was once a picture of a character mining a rock with what appeared to be a dragon pickaxe on the banner at the top of the homepage. It was later removed.
 * A recent announcement (Q&A Further Answers - 5 March 2009) made by Jagex confirmed that dragon pickaxes would be introduced to the game in the near future. Dragon pickaxes were released on 9 September, 2009.
 * Interestingly, although Pickaxes can be made using the Smithing skill with only the Metal bar and a Hammer, there is no wood involved in the production and thus the origin of the pickaxe's handle becomes a mystery.
 * Upon the release of Dragon pickaxe, all the other pickaxes underwent an animation change, except the crush attack and mining animation, which the latter was already updated after release of HD. Still, mining and crushing action would use the new figures released.
 * A common myth with Pickaxes and Mining is that when wielding a pickaxe, you mine faster when your combat setting is on Impale. This, however, is untrue.

Pioche