Sandstone

Sandstone is a solid block. It is found naturally at the bottom of sand stacks, and can be crafted by putting four blocks of sand in a square. Hence creating sandstone does not require the use of a crafting table.

Chiseled Sandstone is a kind of sandstone with a Creeper face and various small carvings on it. It can be crafted by placing one sandstone slab on top of another, and thus does not need a crafting table, for you can use your inventory crafting. (However, the sandstone slabs themselves would need a crafting table.)

Smooth Sandstone is a kind of sandstone with a smooth looking texture. It can be crafted by placing four blocks of sandstone in a square, so it does not require the use of a crafting table, for, in the similar way of Sandstone and Chiseled Sandstone, it can be crafted in your inventory.

Function and behavior
Unlike sand, sandstone is not affected by gravity, and it will not fall if placed without a supporting block underneath it. It normally appears at the lowest levels of sandy areas and supports the sand above it, but if a lake is generated in that same volume, it may carve away the sandstone and result in volumes of unsupported sand which will collapse if disturbed. Sandstone's appearance makes it highly suitable for desert-themed architecture.

If the player spawns in a desert biome in a survival mode game, sandstone will be readily obtainable for the player to build a shelter with. Bear in mind that it requires four blocks of sand to compress into a single block of sandstone. Placed sandstone can be harvested with any pickaxe. Breaking a sandstone block by hand destroys the block but drops no resources; it takes slightly longer to mine it with bare hands than with a wooden pickaxe.

Sandstone can be crafted into Slabs. Because slabs are currently represented in the game by using different data values for a single block type, sandstone slabs behave as if they were made of stone. This means they take longer to mine and have much greater blast resistance than the sandstone blocks from which they were made. Sandstone's blast resistance is otherwise similar to sand or grass block, and is much less than that of wood or stone.

Sandstone is the material used to generate a covered structure known as a desert well. These appear occasionally in desert biomes. They are 5x5 blocks in size and have a 3x3 volume of water in the shape of a plus sign in the center. They may sometimes be useful for obtaining water, although deserts often tend to have lakes or oases in them anyway.

History

 * Sandstone was added in Minecraft Beta 1.2.
 * As of Beta 1.3, Sandstone is now found below three blocks of naturally generated sand. Additionally, the ability to craft Sandstone slabs from Sandstone was added in the same update.
 * Sandstone did not occur naturally in chunks generated in Beta 1.8. This issue was resolved in Beta 1.8.1.
 * In 1.2, two new textures NewSandstoneGrid1.png and NewSandstoneGrid2.png were added to the terrain.png and were to be/would have been used as decorative sandstone variants; however, these textures did not appear in the game at the time, and were later changed.
 * In 1.2.4, the textures added in 1.2 were changed, and the blocks which use them, Chiseled Sandstone and Smooth Sandstone, were actually implemented. They had the same in-game name as regular Sandstone, and Chiseled Sandstone appears to have a Creeper face on the block sides.
 * In snapshot 12w19a, distinct names were given to the variants of sandstone. Before this update, Chiseled Sandstone was often referred to as Hieroglyphic Sandstone or Decorative Sandstone.
 * Along with the new pyramids in snapshot 12w21a, smooth and chiseled sandstones are used as building materials for the pyramids.
 * Sandstone stairs were added in snapshot 12w21a.
 * The recipe for Sandstone Stairs was added in snapshot 12w21b.

Trivia

 * As of version 1.2.4, both Smooth Sandstone and Chiseled Sandstone can be used in all the same ways as sandstone, including making Smooth Sandstone, or slabs for Chiselled Sandstone. Their output rates ultimately give no material loss nor gain. It should be noted that it is not possible to convert any of these blocks back to normal sandstone, but two slabs can be used to attain the same look.
 * Sandstone is the only block that uses only itself as a material to create a variant of itself (Sandstone or Smooth Sandstone to Smooth Sandstone).