How to Make Shears in Minecraft and Every Job They Do

Place 2 iron ingots diagonally in a crafting grid to make shears. The grid above shows one diagonal; the opposite direction works too, and so does the 2x2 inventory grid. You don’t need a crafting table.

Two ingots is cheap for what you get. Shears have 238 uses and handle a surprising number of jobs no other tool can do. Short on iron? Our guide to finding iron points you to the best depth.

Shearing sheep

Use shears on a sheep and it drops 1 to 3 wool without being hurt. It grows the wool back after eating grass, so a small pen gives you wool forever. Killing a sheep only gives 1. If you want colored wool, dye the sheep before shearing; breeding sheep explains color mixing.

Blocks that need shears

Some blocks only drop themselves when cut with shears (or Silk Touch):

• Leaves, for hedges and decoration. Shears also break them fastest.
• Cobwebs, which drop as cobweb blocks instead of string.
• Vines, glow lichen, grass, ferns, dead bushes and seagrass.

Wool blocks drop with any tool, but shears break them fastest.

Other jobs

• Carving pumpkins. Use shears on a placed pumpkin to make a carved pumpkin for golems or a helmet.
• Harvesting honeycomb. Shear a full beehive or bee nest to collect 3 honeycomb. Put a campfire under it first so the bees stay calm; see getting honey.
• Mooshrooms. Shearing a mooshroom turns it into a normal cow and drops 5 mushrooms.
• Snow golems. Shears take off their pumpkin head.
• Disarming tripwire. Cutting tripwire string with shears doesn’t send a pulse, so traps don’t fire. More in our tripwire hook guide.
• Removing gear from animals. Since Java 1.21.6 and Bedrock 1.21.90, shears take saddles off horses, pigs and striders. They also remove wolf armor (and, in Java, llama carpets). It used to take killing the animal to get a saddle back off a pig.

Enchanting shears

Shears can’t go in an enchanting table, so use an anvil and books. Efficiency speeds up wool and leaf cutting, Unbreaking and Mending keep them alive. Silk Touch doesn’t apply to shears and isn’t needed, since shears already collect the blocks above.

For the rest of the early tool set, see the guides hub.