If you’ve ever sprinted through a forest looking for wool to make your first bed, only to kill three sheep and still walk away with just two wool drops, you know how frustrating early survival can be. Most new players don’t realize that a simple, cheap tool can solve that problem instantly, and we’re breaking down how to make shears in Minecraft today to save you hours of grinding for basic resources. Shears are one of the most underrated tools in the entire game, with uses far beyond just collecting wool faster, and once you start carrying them in your hotbar, you’ll never go back to punching leaves or killing sheep for decor again.
How to make shears in Minecraft: required materials and crafting steps
You don’t need any fancy tools or rare resources to craft shears, which is part of why they’re so useful early in a survival world. The only items you need are 2 iron ingots, plus access to a 2x2 personal crafting grid or a 3x3 crafting table—either works, no special recipe layout required.
To craft them, place your two iron ingots diagonally across the grid, with one in the top-right slot and one in the bottom-left slot, or vice versa. The recipe is shaped, so you can’t place them side by side or stacked vertically, but the diagonal direction doesn’t matter. Once you see the shears icon pop up in the result slot, just move it to your inventory, and you’re good to go.
If you don’t want to craft them right away, you can also find shears in village shepherd chests with a 47% spawn rate, or in woodland mansion chests on rare occasions. You can also buy them from novice-level shepherd villagers for 2 emeralds, but that’s a far worse deal than just mining two iron ore and smelting it yourself. We always recommend crafting them as soon as you get your first two iron ingots, even before you make an iron sword or pickaxe if you’re planning to build a base quickly.
Core uses for shears that make them worth carrying 24/7
A lot of new players only use shears to collect wool, but they have far more uses that make them one of the most valuable tools in your hotbar. We’ve listed the most useful ones below, in order of how often you’ll use them in a standard survival playthrough:
We once spent an hour punching oak leaves to build a hedge around our first survival base, and we didn’t realize we could have finished the job in 5 minutes with a pair of shears. Don’t make that same mistake. Even if you don’t think you need them right now, keep a pair in your inventory for random gathering runs.
How to enchant shears for maximum utility
While shears don’t have as many enchantment options as swords or pickaxes, the right enchantments can make them last hundreds of times longer and even give you extra drops when you use them. You don’t need to enchant your first pair of shears, but it’s worth enchanting a spare pair once you have an enchantment table set up at your base.
The best enchantment for shears by far is Unbreaking III. Unbreaking III gives shears a 75% chance to not lose durability every time you use them, which extends their total uses from 238 all the way up to nearly 1,000. That means you can go months of regular play without needing to craft a new pair.
Fortune is another great option, but it only works on specific blocks: Fortune III gives you up to 4 drops per block when you harvest glow berries, sea pickles, seagrass, and ferns, but it doesn’t affect wool drops or leaf drop rates. Mending is also useful if you want your shears to last forever, since you can repair them just by collecting XP while you have them in your hotbar. You can’t put Silk Touch on shears, though, since they already give you the block itself for most items you mine with them.
One thing to note: Enchantments don’t make shears mine any faster, so don’t waste an Efficiency book on them. It won’t do anything, and you’re better off saving Efficiency for your pickaxe or axe instead.
Common mistakes to avoid when using shears
Even though shears are a simple tool, there are a few common mistakes that new players make that waste resources or cause unnecessary frustration. We’ve outlined the most frequent ones we see from new players in our survival servers, so you can skip the learning curve.
First, don’t use shears to mine blocks they aren’t designed for. Shears lose durability just as fast when you mine stone, dirt, or wood as they do when you mine leaves or wool, but they don’t give you any speed bonus for those blocks. You’ll waste a perfectly good pair of shears in 2 minutes if you use them to mine dirt, so always switch to your pickaxe or shovel for those blocks.
Another common mistake is shearing baby sheep. Baby sheep can’t be sheared, and using shears on them won’t give you any wool, it will just waste durability. Wait until they grow into adult sheep, which takes about 20 minutes in real time, to shear them. You also don’t need to shear sheep more than once every few minutes, since they need to eat grass to regrow their wool before you can shear them again.
Finally, don’t keep only one pair of shears if you run a large farm or do a lot of building. If you’re out collecting leaves for a big build and your shears break mid-run, you’ll have to walk all the way back to your base to craft a new pair. We always keep two spare pairs in a chest near our farming area, plus one in our ender chest for long exploration trips, just in case.
Whether you’re a brand new player still figuring out basic crafting recipes or a veteran who’s beaten the Ender Dragon 10 times, shears are a tool that deserves a permanent spot in your hotbar. Now that you know how to make shears in Minecraft, you can skip the frustration of hunting for sheep for hours, clear out leaf piles in seconds, and collect all the fragile decor blocks you want for your next build. Give them a try on your next survival playthrough, and you’ll quickly wonder how you ever played without them.