Crafting Table

The Crafting Table, or Workbench as previously called before the Beta 1.2 update, is one of the most essential blocks in Minecraft. It has a grid on top and tools on the side faces, and shares the bottom texture with the wooden plank. Crafting Tables can naturally occur in NPC villages.

Uses
Right-clicking on a crafting table (on the ground, not while in your inventory) will open the 3×3 crafting grid which allows you to craft more items than with the crafting grid in your inventory. A crafting table is essential in order to advance at all in the game. It is one of the most important blocks in the game as starting tools cannot be created without it. Items left in the crafting table spaces will fall out when the crafting screen is closed.

As of Beta 1.6, items to be retrieved from the crafting table can automatically be moved to the inventory by holding shift when clicking to pick them up.

As of Beta 1.8 Pre-release, holding shift when clicking on an item to be retrieved from the crafting table will craft as many items as can be made from the given ingredients and move them to your inventory.

The crafting table can also be used as fuel in the Furnace to smelt 1.5 items, or to create neat patterns on floors, using the visible grid on the top.

A crafting table can be mined with any tool. Like many other blocks, a crafting table can be mined slightly faster with a sword although it reduces the sword's durability by twice as much as hitting a mob once.

It's recommended to have one crafting table in your inventory when travelling on longer journeys to guarant the possibility of crafting tools or items needed. You can mine it and collect it again after usage. Also, someone on my multiplayer world made a huge crafting table out of colored wool! :)

Crafting
You need 4 wooden planks to craft the Crafting Table. You get 4 wooden planks from 1 wood block, so you need 1 wood block for a crafting table. Because of the pattern used, it can be built at any time using the 2x2 crafting grid in the Inventory.

Trivia

 * Crafting tables can be placed near lava and catch fire. However, they will not burn and after several seconds the fire will extinguish, leaving the crafting table intact.
 * The underside of the crafting table has the same texture as wooden planks, meaning that they can be secretly placed into ceilings of wooden houses.