Crafting Table

The Crafting Table (or Workbench) 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 Wooden Planks. Crafting Tables can naturally occur in NPC Villages.

History
The Crafting Table was previously called Workbench before the Beta 1.2 update.

The crafting table became a possible fuel for the Furnace in Beta 1.5.

Shift-clicking to move items to and from the hotbar was added in Beta 1.6.

As of Beta 1.8 Pre-release, holding shift when clicking on an item in the crafting table will also craft as many of the product as possible.

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 menu is closed.

Items to be retrieved from the crafting table can automatically be moved to the inventory by holding shift when clicking to pick them up.

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 items, or to create neat patterns on floors, using the visible grid on the top.

A crafting table can be mined with any tool. But mining it with an axe is most efficient.

It's recommended to have one crafting table in your inventory when travelling on longer journeys to guarantee the possibility of crafting tools or items needed. You can mine it and collect it again after usage.

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.
 * Crafting tables cannot hold items in the crafting boxes, while furnaces can.
 * It is possible to place a torch on top of a crafting table; however, the crafting table must have snow covering the top. When you place the torch on the snow, the snow will be replaced and the torch will be on top of the crafting table. There is also an alternative way to do this. You can place a torch on the barrier box of another torch and it will be placed as a standing torch on top of the Crafting Table.
 * Crafting tables can be used as a fuel in a Furnace, but they only can complete 1.5 smelting operations and cook for 15 Seconds, so they don't make very good fuel.