How to Disenchant in Minecraft

Let’s say that you fished up an enchanted book with some enchantments that you never plan to use. You could just leave it in storage and forget about it eventually, or you could obtain some experience by placing it in a grindstone.

This book will likely never see the light of day, and while protection and thorns are decent enchantments, the curse of binding makes it a little less desirable. To disenchant this book and obtain experience from it, place it in a grindstone. Unfortunately, you cannot disenchant curses and there is no legitimate way to remove a curse from any item other than losing it or dying with it.

Once you click on the end result on the right, the enchantments that can be removed will be, and you will obtain a small amount of experience. If you have a book or item without any curses, you can also bring it back to its unenchanted state.

Follow the same steps above, place your enchanted item in the grindstone and click on its end result to get a regular book.

This can be useful for rerolling the offered enchantments in an enchantment table. If you spend a level at an enchanting table, you will be offered new enchantments for that particular type of item (book, sword, bow, trident, etc.)

As you can see, the level 1 enchantment will provide unbreaking I. To get a new set of enchantments you can select the level 1 enchantment and place another book to see what else you could get.

The books with enchantments you do not want can be used to refund small amounts of experience back to you, making the grind to hit level 30 easier to handle.

The recipe to make a grindstone yourself is relatively cheap. First you will need to obtain 2 wooden planks. Just break down any tree to obtain enough raw logs to make a grindstone.

Truthfully, you only need one wooden log in order to have enough to make a grindstone. After you have obtained a wooden log, break it down into planks by placing it in your crafting menu. Each log will yield 4 wooden planks.

Keep 2 of your wooden planks and convert 2 planks into sticks by placing them in a 2×1 column. This will give you 4 sticks.

Now that you have the wooden components ready, you will need to obtain a stone slab. Cobblestone and smooth stone slabs will not work for this recipe. You will need to obtain a regular stone slab. To do so, you will need a furnace. Break some stone with a pickaxe until you have about 11 cobblestone. To make a furnace, place 8 cobblestone blocks in a crafting table, leaving the middle-most slot open.

Place your furnace down and cook your remaining cobblestone to get regular stone. You will need at least 3 regular stones in order to make a stone slab. If you have any extra wood, you only need 2 wooden planks to fully cook 3 cobblestone into regular stone.

Wait for the stone to finish cooking and you are all set to craft your own grindstone. To craft stone slabs, place a row of regular stone in your crafting table. Slabs are half of a block, since the recipe calls for 3 stone slabs, you will obtain 6 stone slabs.

To craft your grindstone, place a stone slab in the middle-most slot, 2 sticks on either side of the stone slab, and place a wooden plank below each of the sticks.

That is all you need to craft a grindstone for yourself in Minecraft.

Can you Disenchant any Item Level?

You can disenchant any enchanted item at a grindstone. The grindstone will not be able to remove any curses, so it will not provide any experience or the regular item when you disenchant a cursed item, but it can remove any other level of enchanted item. The higher the enchanted level, the more experience you can expect to gain from disenchanting.

How do you Remove a Curse?

There is no legitimate way to remove a curse in Minecraft. You could argue that you can remove a curse of vanishing enchanted item by dying with it, but that removes the whole item. The only way to remove a curse is if the enchanted item is a mob or pumpkin head. Placing and breaking the cursed item will remove the curse.

Can you Disenchant an Item without Destroying it?

Disenchanting does not destroy an item. In fact, you can even repair it through a grindstone. While this will always remove any enchantments on either item, you can repair the item in the top slot by using the same type of item in the bottom slot. The bottom slot is consumed through this method, so it is not a common procedure with repairing in mind. Nevertheless, disenchanting an item does not require destroying the item.

Congratulations, you now know how to disenchant items with a grindstone in Minecraft. If you have been playing on survival for a while and have looted many different areas, you will likely have a mix of enchanted items (if you bother to pick them up in the first place). Regardless, having a lot of enchanted items can help boost your progress towards getting the perfect set of enchanted weapons, armor, and tools. The grindstone is a useful item for this purpose.