Smelting

Smelting

Smelting is a method of producing refined goods in Minecraft, also known as melting, baking, cooking, burning, and producing. It has the same idea as crafting; one must put in acceptable ingredients, and a corresponding output will be given. However, smelting utilizes furnace blocks, which have a unique interface: one "input" field for the object that will be heated, one field for the fuel, and one "output" field for the final smelted product. For example, two saplings (fuel) could be used to smelt one wood (input) into one charcoal (output).

To smelt something, an input material and a fuel must be loaded into the furnace. It will begin to smelt on its own and will continue to work if the menu is closed and the player leaves. When the furnace begins to smelt, it will consume one piece of fuel and the fire gauge will fill up. As the input smelts, the fire gauge will slowly recede until it is gone, and then the next piece of fuel will be used. If there is no more fuel left, the furnace will be interrupted and the item will be uncooked. As of snapshot 14w02a, however, the smelting process is paused when all fuel is used, leaving the item partially heated. The item continues to be heated when more fuel is added. Unfortunately, if fuel is burning and runs out of input, the fire gauge will continue to burn down, wasting the burn time left. Once the fire gauge is out, no more fuel will be used.

As things smelt, an arrow icon represents the cooking process. Each smelting operation takes 10 seconds and the progress will be shown on the arrow. If the furnace runs out of fuel before the arrow is filled up, then the input will not be smelted and the process will have to be repeated. When the arrow fills up completely, one input item will be put into the output field as an output item.

If the player leaves a furnace while it is smelting and travels so far that the chunks unload, the smelting process will halt until the player returns. Smelting will also pause if one leaves the dimension the furnace is located in. If the player sleeps in a bed while a furnace is smelting, the furnace's progress will be the same as if the bed had not been used and no additional time had passed. This is because when a player sleeps in a bed, no time actually passes. Instead, the game sets the time of day to morning.

Recipes

Food

Processing ores and materials

Wasting ores

The following ores can be smelted, but in these cases this is unnecessary and wasteful. All these ores will yield their product freely when mined with an appropriate pickaxe. The ore blocks themselves can only be obtained with the Silk Touch enchantment. Also, these ores either produce multiple drops when mined, or may do so when mined with a Fortune-enchanted pickaxe. Smelting, however, will always give only a single unit of the product. Mining the ore blocks will also give far more experience.

Other smeltable items

Fuel efficiency

Sleeping while smelting/cooking items will not speed up the process.

Note that after a piece of fuel has started burning, you cannot stop it from burning, though you can remove any unburnt pieces of fuel. If there are fewer items that the fuel can burn, some of the fuel will be wasted. Accordingly, you will usually want to burn things in multiples of 8 (lumps of coal or charcoal), or occasionally 3 (2 wooden planks). For individual smelts, you can use saplings, 2 of which smelt 1 item.

When starting a new world, burning your wooden tools (once you have stone) is a quick way to make your first lump or two of charcoal. They each still smelt a complete item even if almost used up.

For larger jobs, a single bucket of lava or a coal block can burn more items than will fit in the furnace—both input and output are limited to a stack of 64, but a block of coal burns 80, and lava can burn 100. To use lava efficiently, keep the remaining load of 36 or 16 items handy, and put it in during the middle third of the burn (after it has done that many, but before it exhausts the original stack). Remember to both refill the unsmelted stuff, and remove the smelted product! A despawn timer on a note block may help.

Alternately, You can use hoppers on top and bottom of the furnace. This will automatically feed and empty the furnace, but loses the experience gained by manually unloading the furnace. For really big jobs, a third hopper can feed in fuel (empty buckets will go in the output hopper).

This column is the unit-of-wood-equivalent. Calculation made once the fuel item is converted back to wood.

This value is dependent upon the fuel used to smelt the wood. Using a trapped chest to produce one charcoal produces the lower number, while using a fuel that does not consume wood, such as saplings or lava, produces the higher number. Using charcoal as the fuel gives a figure of 70s per wood block since the player will obtain 7 additional charcoal for each 8 wood consumed.

Video

History

Indev Prior to the addition of furnaces,[1] the player started with a bunch of TNT and Flint and Steel. Items could be smelted by dropping items on the ground and then burning them with flint and steel. This was the only way to smelt ores. February 19, 2010	Furnace added. February 23, 2010	The first smeltable item is cobblestone, which can be smelted into smooth stone. Alpha 1.2.0	Furnaces will face towards the player when placed.[2] Before the update, they faced away when placed. Beta 1.2	The top of furnaces have a texture similar to cobblestone. They used to have a texture exactly the same as stone. 1.8	You can now cook up to 64 pieces of food at a time.[3] Since food can stack, it's possible to cook them like any other item. Before 1.8, the player could only cook 1 piece of food at a time (e.g. a single porkchop). 1.9pre1	Furnaces do not take as long to destroy. Official release 1.2.5pre	Shift+clicking can be used to put items into furnaces more easily. 1.3.1	12w18a	Wooden tools work in furnaces as one full furnace use. 12w22a	Smelting various ores in furnaces now rewards players with experience points. When using lava for fuel you get the bucket back. 1.4.2	12w39a	Previously, the furnaces light up blocks all around them, this snapshot made furnaces only lit up blocks in front of them.[4] (images showing difference). 12w40a	The previous change was reverted until the new lighting system could be optimized. 1.4.6	12w49a	When holding sneak, the player can place blocks and items (like redstone, repeaters, and levers) directly onto furnaces. 1.5	13w01a	Added a Hopper block, which can place and take out items from furnaces. 13w02a	Furnaces renamed using the anvil will display the new name in their GUI where the normal name used to appear. 1.7.2	Furnaces no longer can burn each slab like a plank which used to allow 1.5 smelts per slab but now just .75. This trick allowed 6 times more smelts than wood block, now only 4. Pocket Edition Alpha 0.3.2	Furnaces added, meaning that every available block and item can now be gathered, crafted or smelted into. (no more unlimited items). 0.8.0	Wooden tools can now be used as tools. Lava buckets can now be placed to smelt items (100 items). Trivia

It takes 10 minutes and 40 seconds to smelt a stack of 64 items. Burning Wood with Wood Planks to make Charcoal is over 5 times more efficient than using the wood itself as fuel. It is just over 1 1⁄4 times more efficient than using planks. When making charcoal, it's most efficient to convert 1/7 of the logs into planks (for fuel) Jeb has stated he likes the idea of smelting Gravel to create "Stone Chunks", which could be crafted into Stone Bricks in a 2x2 grid. also By clonearmy52