Introduced in the 1.14 update for Minecraft, the stonecutter is one of the many new villager workstations with their own unique functionalities. The stonecutter hasn't received the kind of attention as many other workstations, such as the anvil, smithing table, or even the grindstone. It's an underrated tool that makes the life of builders, in particular, ten times easier.
A stonecutter essentially allows you to easily have access to a rarer variety of blocks that previously needed to be crafted the difficult way on the crafting table. If you're an aspiring builder or even a seasoned player, the stonecutter is a must-have when creating big builds that require tons of special variations of regular stone blocks.
Where To Find A Stonecutter
The stonecutter isn't just something that has to be crafted. If you're lucky enough, you can find one inside a village pretty easily. This also means you can trade with the Mason villager who owns this job site block.
Masons have a unique house where the stonecutter is usually placed inside in the middle of everything, so it'll be difficult to miss. Before you break the block, make sure to check the trades with the Mason so that you don't waste any good trade opportunities. Masons tend to have some of the best emerald trades; for example, 10 Clay Balls for 1 Emerald.
How To Make A Stonecutter
If finding a village isn't an option, or there just isn't a mason in the village you found and therefore no stonecutter, it's pretty easy to make one yourself.
- You'll need three blocks of stone and one iron ingot for the recipe.
Iron should be pretty simple to find but to maximize your chances, check out our guide on where to find every ore easily.
Once you've smelted your iron into ingots, you'll want to get your hands on stone. Note that this is regular stone, not cobblestone or smooth stone.
Players who are advanced in terms of levels and enchantments can easily get stone by using an enchanted Silk Touch pickaxe to mine stone.
This ensures that none of the stone you mine is turned into cobblestone, but is preserved in its original state instead.
If you're still early into your survival adventure and you have no way of enchanting your pickaxe, you can also mine a bunch of cobblestone and then smelt it inside a furnace. The end product will be regular stone, which can also be cut with the stonecutter later.
To craft the stonecutter, place three blocks of stone in a row at the bottom of the crafting grid, with one iron ingot above the middle block.
How To Use A Stonecutter
Now to the important part, which is using the stonecutter. Right-clicking on the stonecutter will bring up a simple UI in which you need to place a block or blocks of your choice on the left-hand side grid.
Then, the stonecutter will show you all the different block variations it can produce with said block. Click on one of them and collect your block of choice from the right-hand side grid.
The stonecutter works for a bunch of different blocks, but they all need to be stone, meaning wood and glass and other types of blocks obviously won't work. Here are all the blocks you can modify with the stonecutter:
- All stone varieties (smooth, bricks, mossy, cobblestone)
- All sandstone varieties
- Granite, diorite, andesite
- Prismarine
- Quartz
- Purpur
- Nether bricks
- Blackstone
- End stone
- Basal
- Upcoming: as of 1.17, all varieties of copper
The main reason for using a stonecutter is simplicity and efficiency. Players won't have to struggle with crafting recipes. Moreover, it makes it easier to get chiseled versions of certain blocks, such as Chiseled Stone Bricks used for lodestones, which were previously difficult to make and find. However, this is exclusive to the Java Edition.