How to disenchant minecraft

You’ve got a chest full of enchanted gear you don’t want, or maybe you slapped a weak enchantment on your favorite diamond sword and now you’re stuck with it. Either way, you’re wondering how to disenchant minecraft items without losing the gear itself. The answer is simpler than you think: use a grindstone.

The grindstone is a humble crafting block that does one job better than anything else. It strips every non-curse enchantment off a tool, weapon, or piece of armor in seconds. It costs zero XP to use, and it even refunds some experience based on what you remove.

As of 2026, it remains the only clean way to recycle enchanted items in both Java and Bedrock Edition. Let’s walk through exactly how it works, when you should use it, and the traps that catch most players.

Quick Answer

Use a grindstone to disenchant any item. Place it, open its interface, and put the enchanted item in either slot. Collect the clean item and XP orbs from the output.

Curses stay on the item forever. No grindstone? Two sticks, one stone slab, and two planks craft one.

What Does Disenchanting Actually Do in Minecraft?

Let’s get the core mechanic clear, because half the confusion around this topic comes from players assuming it works differently than it does.

Disenchanting removes all enchantments from a single item in one shot. You cannot pick and choose which enchantments stay and which ones go. If your sword has Sharpness III, Knockback II, and Unbreaking III, the grindstone strips all three.

You get the item back clean, with zero enchantments, at full durability (assuming it wasn’t damaged). You also receive XP orbs based on the enchantments removed. The higher the enchantment levels, the more XP you get back.

Here’s the thing most guides skip: the grindstone does not destroy the item. That’s the key difference between using a grindstone and just throwing gear into lava. The tool remains perfectly usable.

You can re-enchant it, repair it, or trade it away. The only permanent change is that the enchantments are gone.

One important detail: the grindstone also acts as a repair station. If you put two matching damaged items in the two input slots, it combines their durability and strips enchantments from both. That’s a separate workflow, and we’ll cover it later in this guide.

According to the official Minecraft website, the grindstone is also the weaponsmith villager’s job site block.

The XP refund is the sneaky part. Most players expect to get back exactly what they spent on the enchanting table. That’s not how it works.

The formula uses a fraction of the original cost, and we’ll break down the math in the section on experience refunds.

If you’re playing on a multiplayer server, disenchanting works identically. There’s no server-side restriction unless an admin specifically disables grindstones. In single-player worlds, it works exactly the same way in survival, creative, and hardcore modes.

When Should You Disenchant, and When Should You Skip It?

The grindstone is a fantastic tool, but it’s not always the right move. Knowing when to use it saves you time, XP, and good gear.

Disenchant When You’re Stuck With Bad Enchantments

You found a diamond pickaxe in a chest with Efficiency I and nothing else. That’s a waste of a perfectly good pickaxe. Disenchant it, get the XP, and re-enchant it fresh.

The same goes for fishing loot, mob drops, or villager trades that gave you gear with a single low-level enchantment.

Disenchant When You Need a Quick XP Boost

This is the hidden gem strategy. If you’ve got a pile of enchanted armor and tools you don’t need, feed them to a grindstone. The XP orbs add up fast.

It’s a reliable mid-game way to recover experience after dying or to push through those last few levels toward a big enchantment. No mob grinder required.

Disenchant Before Re-Enchanting a Valuable Item

Let’s say you have a sharpness I diamond sword and you want sharpness V. You could combine books on an anvil, but that costs a fortune in XP. Instead, grindstone the sword clean, then enchant it fresh.

You lose the small enchantment but avoid the repair cost spiral that makes anvil work so expensive.

Skip Disenchanting When the Item Has Curses

This is the trap that gets everyone. The grindstone cannot remove Curse of Binding or Curse of Vanishing. Those two enchantments are permanent.

Curse of Binding locks the armor onto your body once you equip it. Curse of Vanishing makes the item disappear when you die. No method in survival mode removes these.

Only creative mode or commands can clear them.

Skip Disenchanting When the Enchantments Are Valuable

Don’t strip a god-tier piece of gear because you want a tiny XP reward. If your pickaxe has Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, and Mending, disenchanting it is a massive waste. That combination is worth far more than the XP refund.

Keep it, repair it, and move on.

Skip Disenchanting When You Can Trade It Instead

Librarian villagers buy enchanted books and gear. Sometimes the trade is better than the XP refund. Check your nearby village before you grindstone away something that might earn you emeralds.

If you’re holding an item that’s genuinely useless and cursed, your best option is to drop it in lava or toss it in a cave. The grindstone won’t help, and you’d just be stuck with a wasted inventory slot.

Grindstone vs Anvil vs Enchanting Table: The Right Tool for the Job

Players often confuse these three blocks because they all touch enchantments. They serve completely different purposes. Here’s the breakdown you actually need.

The Grindstone: Your Disenchanting Workhorse

The grindstone is the only block that removes enchantments. It’s cheap to craft, available early game, and costs zero XP to operate. It also refunds XP based on the enchantments removed.

This is the tool for stripping gear clean.

The Anvil: For Keeping Enchantments While Repairing

The anvil lets you repair items while preserving enchantments. It also combines enchanted books and applies them to gear. The catch is the XP cost.

Every anvil use increases the "prior work penalty," which makes each subsequent repair exponentially more expensive. For heavily-used gear with great enchantments, the anvil is the right tool. Just know the costs add up fast.

The Enchanting Table: For Starting Fresh

The enchanting table adds enchantments directly to items. It uses lapis lazuli and XP. This is where you go after you’ve disenchanted an item and want a clean slate.

The table gives you three random options, so you’re not guaranteed the exact enchantment you want. That randomness is why many players prefer villager trading for specific books.

The Decision Tree

• Want to remove enchantments? Use the grindstone.
• Want to repair an item without losing enchantments? Use the anvil.
• Want to add new enchantments? Use the enchanting table or trade with villagers.
• Want to combine two enchanted books? Use the anvil.
• Want to repair two items and don’t care about enchantments? Use the grindstone for free.

The biggest mistake new players make is trying to disenchant on an anvil. It simply doesn’t work. The anvil can combine and repair, but it never strips enchantments.

If you want a clean item, you need a grindstone, no exceptions.

Step-by-Step: How to Disenchant Any Item

Knowing the theory is one thing. Let’s get into the exact process, from crafting the block to collecting your clean item.

Finding or Crafting a Grindstone

You have two ways to get a grindstone: find one or craft one.

Finding a Grindstone:

Grindstones spawn naturally in villages, specifically in the weaponsmith building. The weaponsmith house has a small outdoor work area. Look for the grindstone on a stone block.

If you’re early game and you find a village, you can use theirs immediately. No crafting required.

Crafting a Grindstone:

The recipe is simple and doesn’t require rare materials:

Arrange them in a crafting table like this: place the two sticks in the top-left and top-right corners, the stone slab in the center-top, and the two planks in the middle-left and middle-right slots. That’s it. One grindstone pops out.

Stone slabs are easy. Smelt three cobblestone in a furnace to get three stone blocks, then use a crafting table to turn one stone block into a slab. You’ll have two leftover stone blocks for other projects.

Disenchanting a Single Item

Once you have a grindstone, follow these steps:

1. Place the grindstone on any solid block. Right-click to open its interface.
2. Take your enchanted item from your inventory.
3. Place the item in the left or right input slot. It doesn’t matter which one.
4. Watch the output slot. The disenchanted item appears instantly, with all enchantments removed.
5. Drag the item from the output slot into your inventory.
6. Collect the XP orbs that spawn in the world around the grindstone. The orbs appear on top of or beside the block, so make sure you have space to pick them up.

That’s the entire process. No waiting, no extra clicks, no hidden mechanics. The grindstone operates instantly and costs nothing.

Repairing and Disenchanting Two Items at Once

The grindstone has a second function that confuses players because it’s not obvious.

If you place two matching items in the two input slots, the grindstone combines their durability. The output is a single item with the total durability of both. However, it strips all enchantments from both items in the process.

This is the "repair plus disenchant" combo. It’s useful when you have two damaged iron swords with low-end enchantments. Instead of repairing them on an anvil for XP, you can combine them on the grindstone for free.

You get a repaired sword with no enchantments and a small XP refund.

Here’s the workflow:

1. Place two matching items in the left and right input slots. They must be the same type (two iron pickaxes, two leather helmets, etc.).
2. Check the output slot. You’ll see a single item with combined durability and zero enchantments.
3. Remove the item and collect the XP orbs.
4. Decide what to do next. Re-enchant it, trade it away, or use the XP toward something else.

Both input slots require the same item type. You can’t mix a diamond sword with an iron sword. You also can’t combine items with different enchantment types, not that it matters, because the grindstone removes them all anyway.

That’s the full disenchant workflow, from finding a village grindstone to combining damaged gear. It takes less than 30 seconds once you have the block in place.

How Much XP Do You Get Back? (And Why It’s Never a Full Refund)

The XP refund is the most misunderstood part of disenchanting. Players expect to get back the full cost of their enchantments. That’s not how the mechanic works.

The Official Formula

The refund formula isn't published in-game, but code analysis and player testing confirm the refund is a fraction of the total enchantment cost. Every enchantment on the item has a base value in experience levels, and the grindstone refunds a portion of that.

In practice, you’ll get back roughly 30% of the total experience cost of the enchantments, rounded down. A full set of mid-tier enchanted gear might refund 3 to 7 levels. A single high-level enchantment like Mending alone typically refunds 1 to 2 levels.

It’s not nothing, but it’s nowhere close to what you originally spent.

The easiest way to think about it: you’re getting a recycling bonus, not a reimbursement. The grindstone is not a way to farm XP from gear you enchanted yourself. It’s a way to recover a little value from gear you found, traded for, or salvaged from mobs.

That’s why the best XP strategy is to disenchant loot you didn’t spend XP on. Zombies drop enchanted armor. Villagers trade enchanted books.

Dungeon chests and fishing give you enchanted gear. Grindstone those items for pure profit. If you disenchant your own gear, you’re taking a heavy loss.

One more thing to know: the XP orbs spawn regardless of where you are. They appear right on the grindstone, so build a small enclosure around it if you want to collect orbs with a hopper. Hoppers can’t pick up XP directly, but a water stream can push orbs toward you.

It’s a niche farm design, not something most players need.

The Curse Problem: Why Some Enchantments Won’t Come Off

This is the hidden trap that destroys more gear than any other mistake. Curse enchantments are permanent. No survival mechanic removes them.

What Are the Two Curses?

• Curse of Binding: Once you equip the item, it stays in your armor slot. You can’t take it off unless it breaks, you die, or you use commands.
• Curse of Vanishing: When you die, the item disappears completely. It does not drop on the ground. It’s gone forever.

Both curses can appear on armor, tools, weapons, and sometimes books. You’ll see them in enchanting table options and on loot from mobs, chests, and fishing. They show up as red text on the item.

Why the Grindstone Fails

The grindstone removes all enchantments except curses. Put a cursed item in the input slot, and the output shows the item with its curses still attached. The curses stay through disenchanting, through anvil repairs, and through enchanting table re-enchants.

They are fundamentally locked into the item.

Here’s the specific behavior:

1. Cursed item goes into grindstone. The output keeps the curse text.
2. You try to combine it on an anvil. The curse transfers to the combined item.
3. You re-enchant the cursed item. The new enchantments appear alongside the curse.
4. You try to break the item. Curse of Binding prevents removing it from its slot.

The only ways to remove curses are creative mode, commands, or datapacks on Java Edition. In survival, a cursed item is cursed forever.

What to Do With Cursed Items

• Curse of Binding armor: Use it as disposable gear. Wear it until it breaks, then replace it. The downside is you can’t swap it mid-fight, so you better know what you’re wearing.
• Curse of Vanishing items: Never carry your best tools with this curse. A creeper explosion or a lava dip is all it takes. Use them for basic tasks or drop them entirely.
• Cursed books: These are the sneakiest. A book with Curse of Vanishing applied to a sword means the sword vanishes on death. If you see a cursed book from a villager, don’t buy it.

The One Exception: Creative Mode

In creative mode, you can use the /item replace command or simply drag a new item into your armor slots. Curses don’t restrict creative players. On Java Edition, the /enchant command with curse_of_binding can add curses, and /data commands can remove them.

On Bedrock, the addon tools are more limited.

If you’re not in creative mode and not running commands, the answer is simple: don’t equip cursed gear. The grindstone will not save you.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Disenchanting

Players lose good gear, waste XP, and confuse themselves constantly. These are the six mistakes we see most often in forums and in-game.

Mistake 1: Disenchanting Your Main Weapon or Tool

We get it. You put Efficiency I on your diamond pickaxe and you hate it. But grinding away that enchantment also removes the Unbreaking III you added later, or a good Mending book you combined onto it.

Check the full enchantment list before you feed anything to the grindstone. If the item has any valuable enchantments, the anvil is the better path or just keep the item as-is.

Mistake 2: Expecting Curses to Disappear

We already covered this, but it deserves a second warning. The grindstone keeps curses. Players waste time trying every possible slot combination, only to watch the curse stay on the item.

Stop trying. Curses are permanent in survival.

Mistake 3: Using the Grindstone to "Repair" Valuable Gear

The grindstone can combine two damaged items, but it also strips all enchantments. If you put your enchanted diamond sword in the grindstone to "repair" it with a junk sword, you’ll lose every enchantment. The right tool for keeping enchantments during repair is the anvil, even though it costs XP.

Mistake 4: Disenchanting Enchanted Books Without Checking Their Value

A single enchanted book can be worth several emeralds to a librarian villager. Before you grindstone a book, check the enchantment. If it has a high-level enchantment like Mending, Frost Walker, or Soul Speed, trade it instead.

The XP refund is tiny. Villager trades can give you a steady supply of emeralds.

Mistake 5: Building a Grindstone Out of Reach

The grindstone is a utility block. Place it where you actually work. A quiet corner of your base, near the enchanting table, is ideal.

Don’t hide it in a faraway room. The convenience matters because you’ll use it far more often than you expect.

Mistake 6: Forgetting That XP Orbs Need Pickup Space

XP orbs fly out of the grindstone and can scatter behind nearby blocks. If your grindstone is crowded against a wall, the orbs may land somewhere awkward. Build your grindstone station with open space around at least three sides.

That simple setup prevents lost XP.

Real Scenarios: When Disenchanting Saves Your World

The theory is clear, but real Minecraft moments show why the grindstone matters. Here are four typical situations you’ll recognize.

Scenario 1: The Full Inventory Cleanup

Your chests are overflowing with enchanted iron tools and leather armor from zombie and skeleton drops. You don’t need any of it. Instead of tossing it all into lava, you feed each piece to the grindstone.

Ten items later, you’ve gained 8 to 10 experience levels. That’s a free boost early game, without a single hostile mob encounter.

Scenario 2: Rebuilding a God Pickaxe

You have a diamond pickaxe with Efficiency II and Unbreaking II. It’s decent, but you want Efficiency V and Mending. The old enchantments are in the way.

You grindstone it clean, then trade with a librarian until you get Efficiency V and Mending books. You apply them on an anvil, and the pickaxe becomes your forever tool. The grindstone made that possible for free.

Scenario 3: The Accidentally Combined Bow

You tried to combine two bows on the anvil and ended up with an expensive low-level mess. The anvil cost 12 levels just for a bow with Power I and Punch I. You grindstone it, recover the bows, and start over.

It costs you the anvil penalties, but you lose no actual XP from the enchantments because the grindstone refunded a portion.

Scenario 4: The Late-Game XP Farm

Some advanced players build a mini XP farm around a grindstone. They use a villager breeder to produce enchanted books, then grindstone the junk books for XP. The yield is small per book, but it scales with volume.

In an hour, a player can cycle hundreds of books through the grindstone and gain dozens of levels. It’s not as efficient as a mob farm, but it’s passive and safe.

Disenchanting on Java vs Bedrock: Any Differences?

Players on both editions ask this constantly. The short answer: no meaningful differences. The grindstone works the same way in Java Edition and Bedrock Edition.

The one minor difference: in Bedrock Edition, the grindstone interface may show slightly different text placement on some devices. The mechanics are identical. We’ve checked both the Java Edition version history and the Bedrock changelog, and no patch has changed disenchanting behavior differently on either platform.

One thing to note: on Bedrock, players using controllers or touchscreens need to be careful with the output slot. It’s easy to accidentally hover over a secondary output. Always confirm the item you’re grabbing has the enchantments you expect.

In Java Edition, the same mistake is less common because mouse controls are more precise.

Multiplayer servers behave the same way, regardless of the host platform. If a server uses a plugins or data pack that modifies the grindstone, that’s the exception. Check the server’s documentation if your grindstone acts strangely.

In default vanilla gameplay, there’s no difference.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you disenchant with an anvil in Minecraft?

No. The anvil combines items, repairs them, and applies enchanted books, but it never removes enchantments. The grindstone is the only survival-mode block that strips enchantments.

Does the grindstone give you XP for every disenchant?

Yes, but only if the item has enchantments. The XP refund scales with the number and level of enchantments. Items with no enchantments output nothing and give zero XP.

Does disenchanting work on enchanted books?

Yes. Put an enchanted book in the grindstone, and you’ll get an empty book plus XP based on the book’s enchantment. It’s a quick way to turn unwanted enchanted books into a small XP boost, though trading them to a librarian often earns more value.

Can you disenchant a single enchantment and keep the rest?

No. The grindstone removes all non-curse enchantments at once. There is no survival method to pick one enchantment and leave others.

Your only option is to disenchant the entire item and start over.

What happens if you put two enchanted items in the grindstone?

The grindstone combines their durability into one item and strips enchantments from both. The output is a single unenchanted item with the combined durability of the two inputs, plus an XP refund.

Why doesn’t the grindstone remove curses?

Curses are designed to be permanent. The developers at Mojang intentionally made Curse of Binding and Curse of Vanishing impossible to remove in survival mode. Only creative mode or commands clear them.

Final Decision Guide: Disenchant, Repair, or Trash It?

Every enchanted item you pick up forces a choice. Disenchantit, repair it, or drop it. Our research shows that players waste more resources overthinking this than any other inventory question.

Here’s the decision tree we use, so you stop second-guessing.

The Three Options: Disenchant, Repair, Trash

Each option has a clear winner depending on the item and your current stage in the game.

• Disenchant at the grindstone when the item has no valuable curses, you don’t need the enchantments, and you want a little XP.
• Repair at the anvil when the enchantments are genuinely good and you want to preserve them through future use.
• Trash the item, toss it in lava, or leave it in a chest when curses are involved or the item is too damaged to justify the cost.

Decision Tree: What Should You Do With This Item?

Walk through these questions in order. You’ll hit your answer in under ten seconds.

1. Does the item have Curse of Binding or Curse of Vanishing? If yes, trash it or use it as disposable gear. The grindstone keeps curses, and the anvil keeps them too. There’s no clean fix in survival.
2. Do you actually use this item regularly? If you wear the armor or swing the sword daily, skip the grindstone. Repair it instead if the enchantments matter. If you’re replacing it soon, disenchant for the XP.
3. Are the enchantments worth more than the item itself? A diamond pickaxe with Efficiency V and Mending is worth far more than the XP refund. Keep it. Repair it. A stone sword with Bane of Arthropods II is a perfect grindstone candidate.
4. Is the item damaged beyond reasonable repair? Combine two damaged copies on a grindstone for a fresh, unenchanted item. That frees up inventory space and gives you a small XP bonus.
5. Could a villager trade give you more value? Librarians and armorsmiths buy some enchanted gear. If the item has a high-cost enchantment, trade it. If it’s junk, grindstone it.

Quick Reference Table

Use this as a cheat sheet when your inventory is full.

A Final Word of Advice

The grindstone is not a punishment block. It’s an efficiency tool. The best players use it constantly, not because they hate their gear, but because they refuse to let space go to waste.

When in doubt, ask yourself what the item costs to replace. If it’s cheap, grindstone it for the XP. If it’s expensive and well-enchanted, repair it.

If it’s cursed, drop it and move on.

That’s the whole decision. Keep your base clean, your XP flowing, and your best tools exactly the way you want them.