A stick is an extremely useful item used in many primary crafting recipes. The main purpose of the stick is to make tools, but it can be used to make other items as well, such as a Fence or Sign. Sticks are very valuable, as they are used to craft most tools, weapons, utilities, etc. To craft, place 2 Wood Planks or Bamboo over in any crafting grid. Witches have a chance to drop sticks upon death. Sticks can also be found in Chests in Villages. When destroyed, Leaves and Dead Bushes will drop 0-2 sticks making it useful to make the stuff below without crafting it from planks.
Uses[]
Sticks are used primarily as handles for tools, torches, (Ex: Redstone torch) and weapons. They can also be used as the shaft of arrows, the post for signs, the rungs of a ladder, or the ties of rails. Sticks can also be placed in the second slot of a furnace and used to smelt items, albeit inefficiently since they smelt 1/2 of an item, whereas planks smelt 1.5 items. Fletcher Villagers will buy 32 sticks in exchange for an Emerald.
Note: The type of wood planks used in the Crafting Table to make fences and Fence Gates will change the fence's/fence gate's color according to the variant of the wood used (including the Nether variant).
This means that different types of wood cannot be mixed in the same recipe.
Trivia[]
Sticks are classified by some to be one of the most important items in Minecraft, due to their extremely wide use of creating useful items/blocks when combined with others.
In an early 1.13 snapshot, an item called the "Debug Stick" was implemented and then removed. With this item, players could mess around with block NBT Tags.