How to Craft a Wooden Hammer and Start Hammering

Gather the Materials

A Wooden Hammer is the cheapest entry point into the hammer tool line. You need wooden planks and at least one stick. Open a crafting table and arrange the planks and stick in a shaped recipe to produce the Wooden Hammer.

Once crafted, hold the Wooden Hammer and use it like a pickaxe on stone, cobblestone, or ore blocks. The hammer mines a 3x3 area centered on the block you hit, so a single swing clears nine blocks at once. This makes early-game tunneling and branch mining much faster than a standard pickaxe.

Durability and Upgrades

The Wooden Hammer has low durability, so bring spare planks or a second hammer when mining long tunnels. When it breaks, craft a Stone Hammer next. Stone Hammer uses cobblestone in the same shaped recipe pattern as the Wooden Hammer, replacing the planks.

From there, the progression follows the vanilla tool tiers: Iron Hammer from iron ingots, Golden Hammer from gold ingots, Diamond Hammer from diamonds, and Netherite Hammer from netherite. Each tier increases durability and mining speed while keeping the 3x3 area effect.

Use the Wooden Hammer only for soft blocks and short trips. Save your better hammers for deep mining where the area break saves the most time.