block cycling tool ideas

This idea is inspired by terraria's use of hammers in changing tile or block "types".
For instance, in terraria you can hammer a tile and make it a slope/half-tile.
so the tool would work differently in Minecraft. for instance, have you ever misplaced a staircase and it isn't faced the right way? well you could just hammer it and it would cycle through all of the ways it could face, this would probably be split into 2 groups depending on how the staircase is (upside down or right side up.)
but this tool would not only work on stairs, walls, fences, and many others.
for stone variants of walls, it would be able to make notches wherever you wish, without needing to put Uggo string on top of the wall. with wood fence variations it would be able to get rid of the notches for more long stable like fences(this probably won't work diagonally but i'd like to see how that looks) 
and for vines and other plant life that grows, hammering these would stop their growth permanently, at least until you break and replace the plant,  allowing the build to have varied vine growth without using UGGO MODE STRING. or allow vines to have an aging mechanic as kelp does. I'm sorry I just dislike the slab-sized hitbox string has, many times it gets in my face because I like using vines in my builds. have a nice day.