Furnace – Smelting Recipes

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A Furnace is a special block that is almost as important as a Chest. They are used to smelt certain items into resources that have different functions or attributes. Furnaces are available in all versions of Minecraft except for Classic. Before they were introduced to the game, players smelted their items by making a fire and dropping items into it. Furnaces can sometimes occur naturally in NPC villages inside blacksmith workshops.

Type: Solid Block
Requirements: None
Physics: No
Transparency: No
Luminance: Yes, 13 when active
Blast Resistance: 17.5
Tool: Pickaxe
Stackable: yes (64)
Data value: Inactive – dec: 61 hex: 3D Active – dec: 62 hex: 3E

Quick Reference

• Crafting a Furnace
• Smelting Guide
• Cooking Food
• Smelting Ore
• Smelting Other
• Fuel Efficiency
• Tips and Tricks

To access the smelting menu, point your cursor at the furnace and right-click it. The menu has two fields where you can place items. The field to the right of the arrow is where you can collect the items once they have been smelted. The top field is where you place the item you want to smelt and the bottom field is where you place the fuel for the furnace. The most efficient fuels are wood, wood planks, sticks, coal and buckets of lava. Other items such as fences, jukeboxes, bookshelves, chests and crafting tables can also be used as fuel, but are very inefficient. It takes 10 seconds to smelt any of the items listed below. Furnaces look quite similar to dispensers but have completely different uses. A pickaxe must be used to pick up a furnace. When a furnace is destroyed, the items left inside it are also destroyed. Once the items and fuel are placed in the furnace, the menu can be closed and the smelting will continue as long as there are still objects left to smelt and fuel available to heat the furnace. The fire icon in the menu shows how much fuel burning time is left. Another fuel will be consumed when the fire icon completely dies down. The furnace will stop using fuel when all the items in the item field have been smelted. It will also stop working if it runs out of fuel. The arrow is the smelting progress bar for the item being smelted. It will start from the beginning when it starts smelting another item or once more fuel is added. If the furnace runs out of fuel before the progress arrow reaches 100%, the input won’t be smelted and the bar will reset.

Crafting a Furnace

Name	Input >> Output	Description
Furnace		Provides the ability to smelt items and resources into other useful items/resources.

As a Crafting Ingredient

Name	Input >> Output	Description
Powered Minecart		Pushes other minecarts along tracks. Powered by fuel.

Smelting Recipe Guide

Smelting (Melting, Baking, Cooking, Burning, Producing) is the way you smelt or heat items in Minecraft. Through the use of a furnace (as described above), raw food can be cooked to make it restore more food points when eaten, ore can be smelted into more refined crafting materials and raw materials can be made into building materials. A furnace is used (along with some fuel) to complete all the smelting recipes below. The smelting/cooking process does not continue while sleeping.

Food

Name	Ingredients	Input >> Output
Cooked Porkchop	Raw Porkchop and Fuel	Restores 4 food points. Raw porkchop restores 2.
Steak	Raw Beef and Fuel	Restores 4 food points. Raw beef only restores 2.
Cooked Chicken	Raw Chicken and Fuel	Restores 3 food points. Raw chicken restores 1.
Cooked Fish	Raw Fish and Fuel	Restores 2.5 food points. Raw fish only restores 1.

Ore and Materials

Name	Ingredients	Input >> Output
Iron Ingot	Iron Ore and Fuel	Used to craft items such as iron blocks, pickaxes and swords.
Gold Ingot	Gold Ore and Fuel	Used to craft items such as clocks, powered rails and armor.
Diamond	Diamond Ore and Fuel	Used to craft items such as enchantment tables, jukeboxes and armor.
Lapis Lazuli	Lapis Lazuli Ore and Fuel	Primarily used as a dye.
Redstone Dust	Redstone Ore and Fuel	Used to build electric circuits.
Coal	Coal Ore and Fuel	Used as a fuel and for making torches.
Glass	Sand and Fuel	Used to craft windows, glass panes and glass bottles.
Stone	Cobblestone and Fuel	Used to craft redstone repeaters, stone brick and other building materials.
Clay Brick	Clay and Fuel	Used to craft bricks.

Other

Name	Ingredients	Input >> Output
Charcoal	Wood and Fuel	Used to craft torches and as a fuel in furnaces.
Cactus Green	Cactus and Fuel	Used as a dye.

Fuel Efficiency

Smelting an item costs 200 units of heat or “ticks” to complete. The smelting/cooking process does not continue while sleeping.

Fuel	Burning Time (Seconds)	Number of Items Smelted per Fuel	Number to Heat Furnace All Night	Number Needed to Smelt Stack of 64 Items
Lava Bucket	1000	100	0.54	0.64
Blaze Rod	120	12	4.5	5.3
Coal	80	8	6.75	8
Charcoal	80	8	6.75	8
Wooden Plank	15	1.5	36	43
Wooden Slab	15	1.5	36	43
Fence	15	1.5	36	43
Wooden Stairs	15	1.5	36	43
Trapdoor	15	1.5	36	43
Wood (All types)	15	1.5	36	43
Crafting Table	15	1.5	36	43
Bookshelf	15	1.5	36	43
Chest	15	1.5	36	43
Jukebox	15	1.5	36	43
Note Block	15	1.5	36	43
Huge Brown Mushroom	15	1.5	36	43
Huge Red Mushroom	15	1.5	36	43
Sapling (All types)	5	0.5	108	128
Stick	5	0.5	108	128
All Wooden Tools/Weapons	5	0.5	108	128

Tips and Tricks

• Charcoal is now less useful than wooden slabs comparing to the amount of logs required, use coal from ores or wooden slabs.
• The advantage of wood planks over regular coal is that they are renewable. As more and more coal is mined and used, you have to travel further away to get it. It takes a while to do, but farming trees and smelting wood to make charcoal is the best option because it is both near to where you are working and efficient.
• The most efficient fuel is coal/charcoal. 8 pieces of coal/charcoal can smelt a stack of 64 items. 43 wood planks are the second most efficient way of smelting and will create 64.5 smelted resources. In order to be perfectly efficient and not lose that 0.5, place 44 wood planks in the furnace, take the first two smelted items out and refill the input field with two more non-smelted ones.
• Furnaces can provide light if you’ve run out of torches, and they can make charcoal which can be used to make more torches which is useful when you are on a long mining expedition.
• One bucket of lava can fuel the smelting of 100 items, but the largest stack can hold only 64 items. To maximize the efficiency of using lava, place a bucket of lava in a furnace along with a stack of 64 items. Come back between 6 minutes and 10 minutes and 40 seconds later. Remove the 32 smelted items and refill it with 32 more non-smelted blocks.
• For large products that require large numbers of smelted items, a wall of furnaces can be built. Coal or charcoal should be used when smelting items at this scale.
• The Furnace is part of the “Hot Topic” achievement and is needed for the “Acquire Hardware” and “Delicious Fish” achievements (you need to smelt iron and cook fish to complete them).