How to Make a Grindstone in Minecraft

Current as of Minecraft Bedrock v26.1 and Java Edition 26.1 — Updated April 2026

TL;DR

• You need 2 sticks, 1 stone slab, and 2 wooden planks to craft a grindstone
• It repairs tools by combining two damaged items of the same type — for free, no XP cost
• It removes enchantments from items and gives you XP back
• It cannot remove Curse of Binding or Curse of Vanishing
• It turns a nearby villager into a weaponsmith

How to Make a Grindstone in Minecraft

The grindstone is one of those blocks that a lot of players walk past in villages without knowing what it does. Once you understand it though, you’ll want one in every base you build.

It does two things really well. It repairs damaged tools and weapons without costing you a single XP level. And it strips enchantments off items while giving you some of that XP back. Both of these are free — no experience needed to operate it.

This guide covers the full recipe, how to get each ingredient, how to use the grindstone properly, and how it compares to an anvil.

What You Need to Craft a Grindstone

Here are the three ingredients:

• 2 Sticks
• 1 Stone Slab
• 2 Wooden Planks (any wood type works)

These are all early-game materials. You can craft a grindstone on your very first day if you want. No iron, no diamonds, nothing rare required.

Step 1: Get Wooden Planks and Sticks

You need 2 wooden planks and 2 sticks.

Start by chopping down any tree. You’ll get wood logs. Open your inventory crafting grid and put a log in any slot — it converts into 4 wooden planks. You only need 2 planks for the recipe, but you’ll want a few extra.

To make sticks, place 2 wooden planks vertically in your crafting grid, one on top of the other. This gives you 4 sticks. You only need 2 for the grindstone recipe.

Any wood type works — oak, birch, spruce, jungle, acacia, dark oak, mangrove, cherry, all of them. The grindstone doesn’t care which one you use.

Step 2: Make a Stone Slab

You need 1 stone slab.

This takes two quick steps:

Step 1 — Make stone: Put cobblestone in a furnace with any fuel. It smelts into regular stone.

Step 2 — Make a stone slab: Open your crafting table and place 3 stone blocks in a horizontal row across any row. This gives you 6 stone slabs. You only need 1.

That’s it. No second round of smelting needed here — unlike smooth stone, regular stone slabs work just fine.

Step 3: Craft the Grindstone

Open your crafting table and arrange the materials like this:

[ Stick ]  [Stone Slab]  [ Stick ]
[ Plank ]  [   Empty  ]  [ Plank ]
[ Empty ]  [   Empty  ]  [ Empty ]

In plain terms:

• Top row: stick on the left, stone slab in the centre, stick on the right
• Middle row: wooden plank on the left, wooden plank on the right, centre empty
• Bottom row: leave it all empty

The grindstone appears in the result box. Drag it into your inventory.

Done. That’s the whole recipe.

Can You Find a Grindstone Without Crafting One?

Yes. Grindstones generate naturally in village weaponsmith houses. If you walk through a village and see a small shelter with a grindstone outside or near a chest, that’s the weaponsmith’s area.

You can break it with any pickaxe and take it. If you break it without a pickaxe, it drops nothing and disappears, so make sure you have one on hand. They also occasionally appear in trail ruins.

Finding one in a village saves you the crafting steps entirely, especially early in a new world.

How to Use the Grindstone

Place the grindstone on the ground (it needs a solid block underneath in Bedrock Edition). Right-click it, or press your use button on console or mobile, to open the interface.

You’ll see:

• Two input slots on the left
• One output slot on the right

There are two things you can do with it.

Use 1: Repair Tools and Weapons

Put two damaged items of the same type into the two input slots. For example, two iron swords, two wooden pickaxes, or two diamond axes.

The output slot shows a single repaired item with the combined durability of both items, plus a 5% bonus on top of the max durability of that item type.

This is completely free. No XP cost, no materials beyond the two items you already have.

Note: If either item has enchantments, combining them in the grindstone strips the enchantments off the output. You get some XP back from those removed enchantments. If you want to keep the enchantments, use an anvil with raw materials instead.

Use 2: Remove Enchantments

Put a single enchanted item into just one of the input slots, leaving the other empty. The output shows the same item with all enchantments removed.

When you take the item from the output, the enchantments are gone and experience orbs drop at your feet. The amount of XP you get back depends on the level and type of enchantments that were on the item.

This is really useful when:

• You get an enchanted item from a mob drop that you don’t need
• You accidentally put the wrong enchantment on a piece of gear
• You want to recycle old enchanted gear for XP before re-enchanting

Important: The grindstone cannot remove Curse of Binding or Curse of Vanishing. These two curses are permanent and no block in the game can strip them off.

What the Grindstone Can and Cannot Do

The grindstone and anvil are designed to complement each other, not replace each other. You’ll want both in your base at some point.

Grindstone vs Anvil: Which Should You Use?

This is one of the most common questions players have, and the answer depends on what you’re trying to do.

Use the grindstone when:

• You have two damaged identical tools with no enchantments — merge them for free
• You want to strip bad enchantments off an item and recover some XP
• You’re recycling old gear you no longer need
• You want to reset the “prior work penalty” that builds up from repeated anvil use

Use the anvil when:

• You want to repair an enchanted item without losing the enchantments
• You want to combine enchantments from two items or add an enchanted book
• You want to rename an item

One smart workflow many players use: enchant at the enchanting table, repair valuable enchanted items at the anvil, and run low-value or unwanted enchanted items through the grindstone to recover XP for another round of enchanting.

For more on building your enchanting setup, see our Minecraft enchanting table guide.

The Grindstone and the Weaponsmith Villager

Place a grindstone near an unemployed villager and they will claim it as their job site, becoming a weaponsmith.

Weaponsmiths trade weapons — iron swords, iron axes, and at higher levels, enchanted diamond swords and axes. They’re great villagers to have if you want a reliable source of combat gear.

If the grindstone already has a villager assigned to it, placing a second one nearby can help attract another unemployed villager to take it as their own job site.

Pro Tips for Getting the Most From Your Grindstone

Disenchant gold items for quick XP. Gold tools and armor have some of the highest enchantability in the game. Enchanted gold gear from mob drops gives you a solid chunk of XP when run through the grindstone. It’s a fast way to level up if you have a lot of loot.

Use it to reset prior work penalty. Every time you use an anvil on an item, it accumulates a “prior work penalty” that makes future anvil operations more expensive. The grindstone resets this penalty — but it removes all enchantments in the process. It’s a trade-off worth considering for items you plan to re-enchant from scratch.

Pair it with your XP mob farm. Running enchanted drops from mob farms through the grindstone gives you free XP without needing to smelt or grind. Our guide on how to build an XP mob farm shows you how to set up that flow efficiently.

Don’t use it on valuable enchanted gear. If a tool has Efficiency V, Fortune III, Mending, or any combination of top-tier enchantments, never put it in the grindstone. Go to the anvil with the right repair material to keep those enchantments intact. The grindstone is for recycling, not for maintaining your best gear.

Early-game durability trick. In your first few nights when tools break fast, keep your most worn-down tools and combine them in the grindstone to squeeze extra durability out of what you have. It’s free, it’s fast, and it beats crafting a whole new tool from scratch. If you’re still figuring out your first days, check out our guide on how to survive your first night in Minecraft.

Grindstone vs Blast Furnace for Recycling Metal Gear

Players sometimes wonder whether they should put old iron or gold gear in the grindstone or the blast furnace.

Here’s the difference:

• Grindstone — combines two items for durability, or strips enchantments for XP. You keep the item.
• Blast furnace — smelts gear into nuggets. You lose the item and get metal back.

If the gear has enchantments you want XP from, use the grindstone first to strip the enchantments and collect that XP. Then if you still want the metal back, smelt the now-unenchanted item in the blast furnace.

If the gear has no enchantments and you just want the iron or gold back, go straight to the blast furnace. Our blast furnace guide covers everything about that process, including the recycling efficiency tip for different durability levels.

Quick Materials Checklist

Before you start crafting, make sure you have:

• Any wood log (chop one tree — you’ll have more than enough)
• 3 cobblestone (to smelt into stone and then cut into slabs)
• A furnace (to smelt the cobblestone into stone)
• Some fuel (coal, wood, charcoal — anything works)

Total raw resources from scratch: 1 wood log, 3 cobblestone, a little fuel. That’s genuinely it. You can have a grindstone within the first 10 minutes of a new world.

The grindstone is cheap, fast to make, and genuinely useful at every stage of the game. Early on it helps you squeeze more life out of damaged tools. Mid-game it helps you manage bad enchantments and recoup XP. Late game it sits in your base as part of a polished gear management system alongside your anvil and enchanting table.

Don’t let it just be that weird block you spotted in a village. Craft one, place it next to your other utility blocks, and start using it.

Once your gear management is sorted, you’ll want to push into harder content. Our guide on how to defeat the Ender Dragon is a good next step when you’re ready.