Tutorials/Cobblestone farming

Cobblestone farming is a process used to get masses of cobblestone without having to dig tunnels or quarries for it. Cobblestone mines work on the principle that when moving water comes into contact with moving lava, the lava is turned into cobblestone, using this a farm can be formed.

A very basic design would be a trench, in which a few water spawners/springs are placed with a lava spawner/spring, but make sure the lava spring is away from your water as water+lavaspring=obsidian, which is great, but not what you want if you're cobblestone farming.

Some tips for building an efficient cobblestone farm:
 * Have the water and the lava source blocks separated so there is no change of accidentally quenching your lava source and forming obsidian
 * Put the water in first so the lava can't get out of your control

A design is shown here in this video. It is suggested to use Obsidian blocks behind where the lava source blocks are, as this will stop you from accidentally mining a hole in the back wall.

There is also a more bulky design, but less of your cobblestone will be destroyed by lava. You can see a video of that version here.

Simple Cobblestone Farm
The simplest way of making a Cobblestone Farm is: LXW   L - lava                     W - water OOO   X - non-flammable block      O - air

Works 90% of the time.

If you want a better cobblestone farm, you can use this method:

Requirements:
 * Rectangle of 4 x 7 block
 * About 80-90 Dirt blocks (or stone, obsidian, whatever, as long as it isn't Cobblestone or any flammable/gravity-affected block)


 * 1 bucket of Lava
 * 2 buckets of water
 * 1 stone stair
 * (- 2 glass blocks)

How to:

Layer 1: Fill a 4 x 7 rectangle with dirt. This is your ground layer.

Layer 2: Looks like this:

xxxx

xxWx

xxox

xxox

xxox

xxox

xxSx

x = dirt

S = stone stair (placed with the highest point to the outside of the rectangle)

0 = air

W = water spring

Layer 3:

xxxx

xxgx

xxgx

xxox

xxox

xxox

xxox

g = glass(just for looking nice, could also be made of dirt)

Layer 4:

xxxx

xxWx

xxox

xoox

xxox

xxox

xxox

Layer 5:

xxxx

xxox

xxox

xoox

xxox

xxox

xxox

Layer 6:

L = lava

WARNING: Do not place the lava before you have placed all other blocks.

oooo

oooo

xxoo

xLxo

xxoo

oooo

oooo

The falling lava and the top water flow will create a cobblestone block. If you then stand on the stairs and mine that block, the cobblestone will most likely fall down in the bottom water flow. (a small percentage will fall in the lavastream) An new cobblestone block is created in the same place, and you can keep mining. Because the blocks behind the created cobblestone are too far away, you can even just hold the left mousebutton while mining and nothing important gets broken. This cobblestone farm will give you about 32 blocks of Cobblestone per minute if you mine it with a stone pickaxe.