How to make shears in Minecraft

Shears are a nifty tool in Minecraft that are primarily used to efficiently gather wool from sheep and perform a few unique actions.

When a player kills a sheep under normal circumstances in Minecraft, they will only receive a single piece of wool and the sheep obviously dies as a result. This can make gathering wool incredibly time consuming, as players who use this method will need to hunt down one sheep per piece of wool they desire to get.

Luckily, there is a far better method that players can employ. Instead of killing a sheep they can use a pair of shears on them instead. This will result in players receiving one to three pieces of wool, and the sheep will survive and eventually regrow it's wool.

This article will be breaking down how Minecraft players can make shears, as well as discuss the uses for them.

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How to make shears in Minecraft

The most obvious and straightforward use for shears in Minecraft, is to use the tool in order to efficiently and effectively gather wool from sheep. When a Minecraft player uses shears on sheep, they will receive one to three pieces of wool that corresponds to the color wool of the sheep that they sheared.

Sheep will eventually grow their wool back after they eat from a grass block. This means that Minecraft players can make their very own wool farm, with just a handful of sheep. Creating one would offer a renewable source of wool, that could be reliably gathered from.

The crafting recipe for shears in Minecraft (Image via Minecraft)

Before Minecraft players can start shearing sheep and collecting wool to their heart's content, they will need to get their hands on a pair of shears first. Luckily, shears are quite simple to craft and only require two iron ingots to do so.

Iron can be acquired by smelting iron ore that is found throughout the depths of Minecraft's Overworld. Furthermore, iron ingots can be found ready to be crafted in a variety of different chests in naturally generated structures.

All a player needs to do is combine the two iron ingots in a crafting window, and presto, a shear is created.

Minecraft players who want to skip crafting altogether, can search in shepherd's chests or try trading with novice-level shepherd villagers.

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Other uses for shears in Minecraft

Other than being used to shear off wool from sheep, shears have a handful of other pretty nifty uses. Shears can be used to turn a pumpkin into a carved pumpkin, which is one of the necessary items to build a jack o'lantern.

Snow golems can have their pumpkin head removed with shears. Honeycombs can be acquired from a full beehive or bee nest.

Shears can also be used to quickly break certain blocks such as cobwebs and leaves. Not only will these blocks be destroyed quickly, they will also sometimes drop items that are not normally dropped when destroyed by any other means.