Tinkers' Construct: Building Your First Tools
Tinkers' Construct is a mod about assembling tools from parts and then modifying them endlessly. This guide covers the opening steps.
Tools from parts
Instead of crafting a tool in a grid, you build it from parts. Use the 
Part Builder to shape parts — a tool head, a handle, a binding — from a material, then assemble them at a 
Tinker Station. The material of each part determines the tool's stats, so the same tool feels different depending on what you make it from.
Your tools are permanent
A defining feature: Tinkers' tools never disappear. They can be repaired, renamed and re-modified freely, so once you make a tool it is yours to keep and improve rather than replace. A worn tool is repaired with more of its material rather than discarded.
Where to go next
Wood and stone parts get you a first pickaxe and tools cheaply. The real depth comes from the Smeltery, which melts metals and ores (and doubles ore output) to cast better parts, and from the modifier system that layers abilities onto your tools. Both have their own guides.
This line is 1.20.1 only
Tinkers' Construct here is Minecraft 1.20.1 (3.11.2.166). There is no 1.21.1 build in this line, so a pack on the newer version cannot include it.
The scale, honestly stated
This is the largest recipe set on the wiki by category count: 41 distinct recipe types. The big ones are Melting at 498 recipes, Material and Damagable Melting at 187 each, Casting Table at 158, Casting Basin at 120, Item Part Builder at 116, Modifier at 114 and Ore Melting at 94, on top of 332 ordinary crafting recipes.
You do not learn this mod by reading the list. You learn it by following one tool from part to finished item and letting the rest follow.
The three systems underneath all of it
- Melting and casting — the smeltery. Melting turns material into fluid; Casting Table (158) and Casting Basin (120) turn fluid back into parts and blocks.
- Part building — the Part Builder (21) and Item Part Builder (116) make tool parts directly from solid material.
- Modifiers — Modifier (114), Incremental Modifier (46), Swappable Modifier (37) and Overslime Modifier (16) are how a finished tool is upgraded.
Where to start
Ore Melting (94 recipes) is the practical first reason to build a smeltery: it processes ore before you own any tools worth making, so the smeltery pays for itself immediately.