As you progress through the world of Minecraft you will start to notice how important it is to learn about enchantments and item and tool durability. Due to the survival aspect of the game, it's crucial to always be as prepared as you can because you don't know what unexpected dangers you might have to face.
And, when fighting bosses like the Wither or the Enderdragon, you can never be over-prepared and it's best to be safe than sorry. In this article, we'll go over everything there is to know about the grindstone in Minecraft, how to craft and why it's such a useful mechanic.
How To Craft A Grindstone
There are only two ways to get your hands on a grindstone. The first way means crafting it. It's actually a fairly easy thing to craft, it doesn't require any rare materials so it shouldn't be too much trouble to create.
The necessary materials are two sticks, one stone slab, and two planks. Then, on the crafting table, you'll have to place the two sticks on the top row, with the stone slab in between, and then, in the middle row, you should place a plank on the right and another one on the left, with a blank space between the two. As shown in the image above.
Alternatively, it's also possible to steal a grindstone from a village. You can find villages throughout your Minecraft world and there is a chance that they will have a weaponsmith. The weaponsmith needs a grindstone to work so all you have to do is find his working station and mine the grindstone with a pickaxe - beware, if you don't use a pickaxe to mine it then it won't drop, it'll simply break.
How To Use A Grindstone
The grindstone has two purposes: it's used to repair and remove enchantments from armor and tools.
If you place an enchanted item on the grindstone, it'll remove the enchantment from that item. And, if you place two items on the grindstone, it'll combine them and create a new item with the same durability as the sum of the durability of the two original items. In this scenario, however, it doesn't matter if the tools are enchanted or not, it'll always remove the enchantment from them.
When the enchantment is removed from an item on the grindstone, a portion of the original experience points used to enchant the item is dropped. So, it's always worth using to gain that extra bit of XP even if you've just found some enchanted items that you have no intention of using in the future. There are several ways to farm experience and level up, this is just one of them.
Unfortunately, the grindstone cannot remove cursed items nor can it remove item custom names.
If you're trying to create your own village, the grindstone is the weaponsmith's job site block. You can place one in your village and an unemployed villager will turn into a weaponsmith. A rather useful profession, once it reaches Expert or Master level it will trade diamond axes and diamond swords for emeralds.