Grindstone

How to remove enchantments

Put the item in either top slot and take the result. Every enchantment except curses is removed, and you get some experience. An enchanted book becomes a plain book.

Because the enchantments are gone, the item can be enchanted again from scratch: useful when an item is too expensive to improve.

Repairing

Put two items of the same kind in the two slots to combine their durability with a 5% bonus. Unlike the anvil, this removes their enchantments.

When to use a grindstone

Use it to clean up found gear with bad enchantments, to get a little experience back from junk enchanted items, or to reset an item that has become too expensive on the anvil. It is also a cheap way to repair two worn tools into one, as long as you don't need their enchantments.

After grinding, enchant the item again in the cheapest order with the enchantment calculator. See Too Expensive! for when that helps.

How much experience you get back

The grindstone adds up the minimum enchanting cost of every enchantment it removes. You then get between half and all of that total as experience points. Curses add nothing, because they stay on the item.

For example, Sharpness V has a minimum cost of 45. Grinding a sword with only Sharpness V gives between 23 and 45 points. Here are a few more, worked out from the game's own costs:

These are points, not levels. A Mending book gives at most 25 points, which is not even 3 levels from zero. So never grind a good book for XP. Grinding is a way to clean items, not to farm experience.

Grindstone vs anvil repair

Both blocks can merge two damaged items of the same kind. However, they work very differently.

So use the grindstone for plain tools, where you have nothing to lose. For example, two worn iron pickaxes become one sturdier pickaxe for free. Use the anvil when the enchantments matter.

Resetting the prior work penalty

Grinding also clears an item's anvil history. The result counts as fresh, so the next anvil steps start from a penalty of 0. Each curse left on it still counts as one anvil use, though.

This is the only way to save an item that shows Too Expensive. First grind it, then enchant it again from scratch. After that, add books in the cheapest order with the enchantment calculator. It only makes sense if you can rebuild the enchantments, so line up the books before you grind.

Step by step: rescuing a Too Expensive item

• First, write down the enchantments the item has, so you know what to rebuild.
• Next, gather the books you need from librarians or the table. Merge them in pairs on the anvil.
• Then put the item in the grindstone and take the clean result. Collect the experience orbs it drops.
• Finally, add the merged books to the clean item in the cheapest order. The total is usually far lower than the step that failed.

What the grindstone won't take

The grindstone gives no result for an item with no enchantments and no damage, because there is nothing to do. Two items must also be the same kind. A sword and an axe won't go together, and neither will an iron and a diamond pickaxe.

Also, items that can't hold enchantments or durability, like blocks and food, don't fit in the slots at all. If nothing shows on the right, one of these rules is the reason.

Grindstones next to farms

An AFK fishing spot or a mob farm piles up enchanted bows, rods and armor. Put a grindstone and a chest next to it. Then grind the junk loot every so often for a trickle of experience. Keep anything with good enchantments, such as a bow with Power IV, because merging it into your own bow is worth more.

Curses and the grindstone

Curse of Binding and Curse of Vanishing survive the grindstone. The item comes out clean of everything else but keeps its curses, so grinding a cursed item usually makes it worse.

There is no way to remove a curse in survival. Instead, avoid putting cursed loot books on good gear. The curses guide explains what each one does.

Crafting and placing

The slab in the recipe must be a plain stone slab, not a cobblestone slab. Smelt cobblestone into stone, then craft three stone into six slabs, or use a stonecutter. The planks can be any wood type.

You can place a grindstone on the floor, on a wall or hanging from a ceiling. Mine it with a pickaxe to get it back. It is also the job site block for the weaponsmith, so placing one near an unemployed villager gives you a weapon trader.

Good uses

• Clean up enchanted gear from zombies, skeletons and fishing, then enchant it yourself at the enchanting table.
• Turn unwanted enchanted books into plain books for the next table session.
• Merge plain, damaged tools without spending levels.
• Reset a Too Expensive item before rebuilding it with fresh books.

Common mistakes

• Repairing two Mending tools on a grindstone. Both lose Mending, so use the anvil or let Mending do the work.
• Grinding a book you could still use. A spare book saves you a trip to the librarians later, and the few points you get back are not worth it.
• Expecting curses to come off. They stay, so check the tooltip for red lines before you grind.
• Grinding before checking the order. A rebuilt item can hit Too Expensive again if you add books one by one; see the pickaxe order for an example.