Spinning Axes

Quickstart

1. Open a 3×3 crafting table and arrange eight matching axes around the outside, leaving the centre slot empty — this creates one Axe Wheel of that tier.
2. Hold the wheel in your hand and right-click to throw it.
3. Watch it fly out, chop through any logs or leaves in its path, damage mobs it passes near, then arc back to you automatically.
4. If your inventory is full when it returns, the wheel hovers in front of you until you free up a slot.

All six wheels appear in the creative inventory under the Spinning Axes tab, so you can grab any tier instantly for testing.

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Overview

Spinning Axes is a Java Edition mod for Minecraft 1.21.5 (Fabric). It adds six art-deco axe-wheel weapons — Wooden, Stone, Iron, Golden, Diamond, and Netherite — that work as reusable boomerang-style throwing tools. Each wheel flies outward on a flat arc, harvests wood and foliage as it travels, hits living entities for tier-based damage, and then homes back to your hand. The item leaves your hand during the throw and reappears when it returns, so you are temporarily unarmed while it is in flight.

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What It Adds

Each wheel has a unique 32×32 art-deco spinning texture and a short throw cooldown of half a second between uses.

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How To Use

• Throw: Right-click while holding a wheel. The item leaves your hand as a spinning projectile.
• Flight: The wheel travels in the direction you are facing with no gravity. It flies outward until it reaches its maximum range, then turns around and homes back toward your eye position.
• Block breaking: As it flies it automatically chops logs and leaves within about one block of its path. It drops their items normally. Once it has broken its maximum number of blocks for the throw it starts returning early.
• Combat: Any living entity the wheel passes close to takes damage (once per entity per throw). On the first hit the wheel begins returning.
• Return: The wheel curves back and tries to re-enter your inventory. If your inventory is full it hovers just in front of you, gently following your movement, and keeps retrying every tick until a slot opens.
• Durability: Each full throw costs one durability point when the item returns to you. When the item breaks it disappears rather than returning.
• Creative mode: No durability is consumed and the wheel is never removed from your hand — a copy is thrown while you keep the original.
• Owner gone: If the owning player logs off or dies while the wheel is in flight, the wheel drops as an item.

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Crafting And Obtaining

Each wheel is crafted by filling every slot of a 3×3 crafting grid with eight matching vanilla axes, leaving only the centre slot empty. Use the axe type that matches the tier you want.

No recipe shortcodes are available for inline display at this time — use the in-game recipe book or a recipe viewer mod to confirm layouts.

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Abilities And Mechanics

Tier Stats

Mining strength determines the maximum block hardness the wheel can break. All standard logs and leaves have hardness values within every tier's reach, but harder wood-adjacent blocks may only be broken by higher tiers.

Block capacity is the total number of log/leaf blocks the wheel can chop in a single throw. Hitting this limit causes the wheel to return immediately.

Range is measured from the throw origin. Once the wheel travels that far it reverses direction even if it has not yet hit anything.

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Progression And Strategy

• Start with Wooden or Stone wheels for early-game tree felling — throw into a canopy to clear many leaves and logs without climbing.
• Golden wheels offer the highest mining strength of any tier, letting them cut through tougher blocks, but they have very low durability and the smallest damage output, so treat them as specialist tools rather than weapons.
• Iron is the best all-around mid-game choice: solid damage, reasonable range, and enough block capacity for most tree farms.
• Diamond and Netherite wheels excel at both mass clearing and combat. The Netherite wheel's 40-block range lets you engage enemies and harvest from far away, and its 96-block capacity can level a large section of forest in one throw.
• Because the wheel always returns, a single well-maintained wheel lasts a long time — prioritise enchanting a Diamond or Netherite wheel with Unbreaking or Mending (standard Minecraft enchantments apply to the item's durability) to keep it going indefinitely.
• Keep at least one inventory slot free before throwing; a hovering wheel is safe but means you cannot throw it again until it lands in your inventory.