All of my Games with this mod so far have caused me to be unable to make pickaxes. This also counts for steel pickaxes.
I am running the most up to date Experimental Factorio version as of 2/3/2019.
This happens regardless of weather other mods are installed or not.
I have not gotten far enough with any mod to know if it prevents their versions of Pickaxes as well.

There is no pickaxe or mining tool inventory slot in 0.17. This mod removes the vanilla game items and gives you the increased starting mining speed and new technology as indicated by the FFF.
If other mods add new mining tools they will still be present and will multiply with this mod for insanely fast mining speeds.