Shears

Shears

Type (deprec.)	Tools
Rarity	Common
Durability	238
Renewable	Yes
Stackable	No
Data value	dec: 359 hex: 167 bin: 101100111
Namespaced ID	shears

Shears are a tool used primarily to shear sheep and mine a few types of 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.

Trading

Novice-level Shepherd villagers have a 40% chance to sell shears for 2 emeralds in Java Edition, and the trade is always offered in Bedrock Edition.

Natural generation

Shears can be found in 12.3% of village shepherd chests in groups of 1.

Usage

	“	Shears were first introduced to Minecraft in a cryptic message posted by Jeb on Twitter. “Jojagog jojabobbobaror popå soshohearorsos nonu”, he wrote. Through the magic of speaking Swedish and deleting a load of useless letters, it can be decoded as “I’m working on shears now”. They were originally going to be a way to defuse TNT, but that was scrapped and instead they were introduced in [Beta] version 1.7 as a way to obtain wool from far-too-fluffy sheep without hurting them in the process. Hooray! Unless you hate sheep. In which case, wow. Take a long hard look at yourself.	„
		— Duncan Geere

Despite using iron in its crafting recipe, it cannot be smelted into iron nuggets.

Shearing

Shears are the most efficient way to get wool from sheep, producing 1–3 wool blocks (as opposed to killing a sheep, which produces only 1 wool block).

Shears can also be used to harvest cobweb, leaves, tall grass, seagrass, ferns (both normal and 2-high), dead bushes and vines. Also, leaves harvested by shears do not decay when placed.

Shearing a mooshroom drops 5 mushrooms of the same color, and turns it into a normal cow.

Shearing a tripwire connected to tripwire hooks does not trigger them.

Shearing a pumpkin turns it into a carved pumpkin after dropping 4 pumpkin seeds.

Shearing a snow golem removes its pumpkin, without dropping the pumpkin.

Shearing either a bee nest or beehive at honey level 5 drops 3 honeycombs. ‌^{[upcoming: JE 1.15 & BE 1.14.0]}

Harvesting a melon block with shears always drop 9 melons.‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}

Speed and durability

The following table shows information about items on which shears can be used. 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, sapling, apple).
• Red: Nothing.

	No shears breaking time	Shears breaking time	Right click with shears
Bee nest or Beehive‌[upcoming: JE 1.15 & BE 1.14.0]	—	—	3 Honeycomb
Cobweb	20 s	0.4 s	—
Dead Bush	0 s	0 s	—
Fern	0 s	0 s	—
Grass	0 s	0 s	—
Leaves	0.3 s	0.05 s	—
Tripwire	0 s	0 s	—
Vines	0.3 s	0.35 s	—
Wool	1.2 s	0.25 s	—
Red Mooshroom or Brown Mooshroom	—	—	5 Red Mushroom or Brown Mushroom
Seagrass	0 s	0 s
Sheep	—	—	1–3 Wool

Enchantments

Shears can receive the following enchantments via an anvil.

• Efficiency
• Unbreaking
• Mending
• Curse of Vanishing‌^{[Java and Legacy Console editions only]}
• Silk Touch‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}

Sounds

Sound	Subtitle	Namespaced ID	Subtitle ID	Source	Pitch	Volume	Min. volume
	Shears click	entity.mooshroom.shear	subtitles.item.shear	?	?	?	?
	Shears click	entity.sheep.shear	subtitles.item.shear	?	?	?	?
	Shears scrape	block.beehive.shear	subtitles.block.beehive.shear	?	?	?	?
MISSING	No subtitle	block.pumpkin.carve	(Plays when carving pumpkin)	?	?	?	?

Achievements

Main article: Achievements

Icon	Achievement	In-game description	Actual requirements (if different)	Availability				Xbox points earned	Trophy type (PS)
				Xbox	PS	Bedrock	Nintendo
	Have a Shearful Day	Use Shears to obtain wool from a sheep.		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	15G	Bronze

History

Java Edition Beta
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.
1.7					Shears have been introduced into the game.
					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		?			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.
1.2.1		12w06a			Shears can now be used to harvest dead bushes.
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 now 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.
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 now 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 golems' pumpkin can now be removed with shears.
1.13		17w47a			When an un-carved pumpkin is right-clicked with shears, 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 now been changed.
Upcoming Java Edition
1.15		19w34a			Shears can now be used on bee nests and beehives to harvest honeycomb.
Pocket Edition Alpha
0.2.0					Added shears to survival mode.
0.8.0		build 3			Added shears to creative mode.
0.9.0		build 1			Shears can now be used to transform mooshrooms into cows.
0.12.1		build 3			Shearing a snow golem now removes its pumpkin.
					Shears can now be enchanted in an anvil.
0.13.0		build 1			Shears can now be used to break tripwire string without triggering it.
0.15.0		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 now 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 will now cost only 2 emeralds.
Upcoming Bedrock Edition
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		Added shears.
TU69		1.76			Shears can now be used to turn regular pumpkins into carved pumpkins. It drops only one piece of pumpkin seeds, unlike Java and Pocket editions.
PlayStation 4 Edition
1.90					The texture of shears has now 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.

References

Items

View at: Template:Items/content [edit]