Drag and dropping the axe out of the equipment slot first and then equipping a different weapon should work. I noticed it crashed shortly after trying to equip a broom by right clicking. The immediate symptom was the mouse-over sound effect would start repeating when hovering over an inventory item, rather than being triggered just once; a few seconds to minutes later the game would crash.
If you un-equip/re-equip the axe you will start doing a single hit of normal damage. Originally I tried un-equipping everything, and then re-equip all but your second ring (Visionary Copper Ring of Blackened Depth), and the attacks started working. I got it to glitch again re-equipping the ring once, but trying it again a couple times there was no problem.
