Shears are tools required to obtain some organic blocks or otherwise mine them faster as well as to shear certain entities and blocks.
Obtaining[]
Crafting[]
| Name | Ingredients | Crafting recipe | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shears | Iron Ingot | ||
| Shears | Damaged Shears | The durability of the two shears is added together, plus an extra 5% durability. |
Despite using iron in its crafting recipe, shears cannot be smelted into iron nuggets.[1]
Trading[]
Novice-level Shepherd villagers have a 40% chance to sell shears for 2 emeralds in Java Edition. This trade is always offered in Bedrock Edition.
Chest loot[]
| Item | Structure | Container | Quantity | Chance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Java Edition | ||||
| Shears | Village | Shepherd's chest | 1 | 12.3% |
| Bedrock Edition | ||||
| Shears | Village | Shepherd's chest | 1 | 12.3% |
Usage[]
Shearing[]
Shears lose 1 durability when used to shear something.
Shears can be used on a sheep to remove its coat and drop 1–3 wool of the corresponding color. The same sheep can be sheared again after it eats from a grass block to regenerate its coat.
Shearing a mooshroom drops 5 mushrooms of the corresponding color and irreversibly turns it into a normal cow.
Shearing a snow golem irreversibly removes its pumpkin, dropping it and revealing its face.
Shearing either a beehive or bee nest that is full of honey makes it drop 3 honeycombs and resets it to honey level 0. The same beehive or bee nest can be sheared again if it is able to reach full honey again. If sheared by hand without a campfire below the hive or nest all bees within will exit and all nearby bees will attack the offending player.
Dispensers can use shears in any of the above listed ways, interacting with any valid block or entity in front of the dispenser's face. This decreases the shears' durability. A dispenser shearing a beehive or bee nest will not anger bees or cause them to leave even if there is not a campfire below it.
Shearing a pumpkin turns it into a carved pumpkin, dropping 4 pumpkin seeds.
In Java Edition, shearing the tip of cave vines, kelp, weeping vines, or twisting vines sets its age value to 25 and stops further growth.
Breaking blocks[]
Shears use 1 durability when is used to break any block, even if it breaks instantly by hand.
Shears can be used to harvest cobwebs, leaves, grass, tall grass, seagrass, tall seagrass, ferns, large ferns, dead bushes, nether sprouts, vines, glow lichen or hanging roots and obtain them in item form. They can also be used to break tripwire connected to a tripwire hook without activating it.
When shears are used to break weeping vines or twisting vines they are guaranteed to drop in item form instead of the usual 33% chance. This only applies to vines directly broken by shears and not vines that are broken due to the destruction of their supporting vines.
The following table shows information about blocks that can be broken with shears. Colors indicate what gets dropped when the block is broken:
- White: The original block.
- Blue: The block's normal drop (i.e. string, sticks, seeds, saplings, apples).
- Red: Nothing.
| No shears breaking time | Shears breaking time | |
|---|---|---|
| Cobweb | 20 s[note 1] | 0.4 s |
| Dead Bush | 0 s | 0 s |
| Fern | 0 s | 0 s |
| Grass | 0 s | 0 s |
| Nether Sprouts | 0 s[note 2] | 0 s |
| Leaves | 0.35 s | 0.05 s |
| Tripwire | 0 s | 0 s[note 3] |
| Vines | 0.35 s | 0.35 s |
| Wool | 1.25 s | 0.25 s |
| Seagrass | 0 s | 0 s |
| Glow Lichen | 0.3 s | 0.3 s |
| Hanging Roots | 0 s | 0 s |
| Twisting Vines Weeping Vines |
0 s | 0 s[note 4] |
- ↑ Breaking cobwebs with a sword is as fast as breaking with shears, and yields string. This costs double durability.
- ↑ In Bedrock Edition, the item drops when breaking it with fists.
- ↑ Using shears does not trigger a redstone pulse.
- ↑ Using shears will increase the chance of dropping from 33% to 100%.
Enchantments[]
Shears can receive the following enchantments:
| Name | Max Level | Method |
|---|---|---|
| Efficiency | V | |
| Unbreaking | III | |
| Mending | I | |
| Curse of Vanishing | I | |
| Silk Touch[BE only] | I |
Sounds[]
| Sound | Subtitles | Source | Description | Resource location | Translation key | Volume | Pitch | Attenuation distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shears click | Players | When a mooshroom is sheared | entity | subtitles | 1.0 | 1.0 | 16 | |
| Shears click | Players | When a sheep is sheared | entity | subtitles | 1.0 | 1.0 | 16 | |
| Shears click | Players | When a snow golem is sheared | entity | subtitles | 1.0 | 1.0 | 16 | |
| Plant cropped | Blocks | When a growing plant is cropped | block | subtitles | 1.0 | 1.0 | 16 | |
| Shears scrape | Blocks | When honeycombs are harvested from a beehive | block | subtitles | 0.8 | 1.0/0.8/0.9 | 16 | |
| Shears carve | Blocks | When a pumpkin is carved | block | subtitles | 1.0 | 1.0 | 16 | |
| Item breaks | Players | When a pair of shears' durability is exhausted | entity | subtitles | 0.8 | 0.8-1.2 | 16 |
Bedrock Edition:
Pumpkins do not have carve sounds.
| Sound | Source | Description | Resource location | Volume | Pitch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Players | When something is sheared | mob | 1.0 | 1.0 | |
| Blocks | When honeycombs are harvested from a beehive | block | 0.8 | 0.8-1.0 | |
| Players | When a pair of shears' durability is exhausted | random | 1.0 | 0.9 |
Data values[]
ID[]
| Name | Identifier | Form | Translation key |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shears | shears | Item | item.minecraft.shears |
| Name | Identifier | Numeric ID | Form | Translation key |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shears | shears | 421 | Item | item.shears.name |
Achievements[]
| Icon | Achievement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) | Gamerscore earned | Trophy type (PS4) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PS4 | Other | |||||
| Have a Shearful Day | Use Shears to obtain wool from a sheep. | — | 15G | Bronze | ||
History[]
| June 3, 2011 | Shears were first mentioned by Jeb on Twitter. The tweet revealing Jeb's work on shears was written in Swedish (Jag jobbar på shears nu), which translates to "I'm working on shears now". | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 7, 2011 | Jeb tweets about how shears were originally planned as a way to defuse TNT, but he dropped this shortly after deciding TNT would detonate only with redstone or fire. | ||||
| Java Edition Beta | |||||
| 1.7 |  Added shears.
| ||||
| Before Beta 1.7, sheep would drop 1-3 wool blocks at most when hit, but shears can harvest up to 4 wool blocks per sheep. | |||||
| 1.8 | Pre-release | Shears can now be used to harvest a fern, vines and grass. | |||
| Java Edition | |||||
| 1.0.0 | Beta 1.9 Prerelease | Shears now harvest red mushrooms from a mooshroom and turn it back into a normal cow. | |||
| 1.1 | 11w49a | Sheep now drop only 1-3 wool blocks when sheared, but they can also regrow their wool by eating grass, which is part of a plan to have animals stay in the game longer.[2] | |||
| 1.2.1 | 12w05a | Shears can now be used to harvest dead bushes. | |||
| 12w06a | Shears are now renewable, due to zombies occassionally dropping iron ingots. | ||||
| 1.3.1 | 12w21a | Shears can now be bought from farmer villagers for 3 emeralds each. | |||
| 12w22a | Shears can now be used to break tripwire string and not set it off. | ||||
| 1.4.2 | 12w38a | Added a sound when using shears on sheep. | |||
| 1.4.6 | 12w50a | Shears can now be enchanted. | |||
| 1.8 | 14w02a | Trading has been changed: Shepherd villagers now sell shears for 3–4 emeralds each. | |||
| Farmers no longer trade shears. | |||||
| pre1 | Shears now lose durability when breaking wool blocks. In previous versions, shears would take durability damage only when destroyed or when breaking tall grass or leaves, the damage remaining the same for all other blocks.[3] | ||||
| 1.9 | 15w34a | Shears may now be used in a crafting grid to zoom in maps. | |||
| 15w45a | Shears no longer zoom in maps. | ||||
| 15w47b | Shears can no longer be enchanted with Silk Touch. | ||||
| Shears now lose durability when used to break any block (formerly lost durability only from leaves, web, grass, vines, tripwire and wool). | |||||
| 15w47c | Shears now harvest cobweb without requiring Silk Touch. | ||||
| 15w49a | Snow golem's pumpkin can now be removed with shears. | ||||
| 1.13 | 17w47a | When shears are used on an un-carved pumpkin, it now turns into a carved pumpkin and drops 4 pumpkin seeds. | |||
| Prior to The Flattening, this item's numeral ID was 359. | |||||
| 1.14 | 18w43a | Shears placed in a dispenser can now shear sheep. | |||
 The texture of shears has been changed. | |||||
| 18w49a | Shears can now be found in chests in village shepherd houses. | ||||
| 1.15 | 19w34a | Shears can now be used on bee nests and beehives to harvest honeycomb. | |||
| 1.16 | 20w15a | Shears placed in a dispenser can now shear mooshrooms and snow golems. | |||
| 1.16.2 | pre1 | Shears are now required in order to pick up roots. | |||
| pre2 | Shears are no longer required to pick up roots. | ||||
| 1.17 | ? | Shears are now required in order to pick up hanging roots. | |||
| 1.18 | 21w37a | Shears can now stop cave vines, kelp, weeping vines, and twisting vines from aging. | |||
| 1.19 | 22w11a | Shears are now required in order to pick up mangrove leaves. | |||
| Pocket Edition Alpha | |||||
| v0.2.0 | Added shears. | ||||
| v0.3.2 | Survival players no longer start out with infinite durability shears in the inventory. | ||||
| v0.4.0 | Removed shears from the creative inventory. | ||||
| v0.8.0 | build 3 | Re-added shears to creative mode. | |||
| v0.9.0 | build 1 | Shears can now be used to transform mooshrooms into cows. | |||
| v0.12.1 | build 3 | Shearing a snow golem now removes its pumpkin. | |||
| Shears can now be enchanted in an anvil. | |||||
| v0.13.0 | build 1 | Shears can now be used to break tripwire string without triggering it. | |||
| v0.15.0 | build 1 | Shears now lose durability when used to break any block. | |||
| Pocket Edition | |||||
| 1.0.4 | alpha 1.0.4.0 | Shears can now be bought from shepherd villagers. | |||
| 1.1.0 | alpha 1.1.0.0 | Breaking a melon block with shears now always drop 9 melons. | |||
| Bedrock Edition | |||||
| 1.4.0 | beta 1.2.13.8 | Shears can now be used to turn un-carved pumpkins into carved pumpkin and spit out 4 pumpkin seeds. | |||
| ? | Shears now harvest cobweb without requiring Silk Touch. | ||||
| 1.10.0 | beta 1.10.0.3 | Shears placed in a dispenser can now shear sheep. | |||
| The texture of shears has been changed. | |||||
| 1.11.0 | beta 1.11.0.1 | Shears can now be found in village shepherd houses. | |||
| beta 1.11.0.4 | Shears sold by shepherd villagers now cost only 2 emeralds. | ||||
| 1.14.0 | beta 1.14.0.1 | Shears can now be used on bee nests and beehives to harvest honeycomb. | |||
| Legacy Console Edition | |||||
| TU3 | CU1 | 1.0 | Patch 1 | 1.0.1 | Added shears. |
| TU69 | 1.76 | Patch 38 | Shears can now be used to turn regular pumpkins into carved pumpkins. | ||
| 1.90 | The texture of shears has been changed.
| ||||
| Shears placed in a dispenser can now shear sheep. | |||||
| New Nintendo 3DS Edition | |||||
| 0.1.0 | Added shears. | ||||
Issues[]
Issues relating to "Shears" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.
Gallery[]
An enchanted pair of shears.
References[]
External links[]
- Taking Inventory: Shears – Minecraft.net on November 20, 2019