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A Furnace is a special block currently only available in the Indev, Infdev, Alpha and Beta versions of Minecraft. Before the furnace appeared, smelting was accomplished by creating a fire and dropping the ores into it. The furnace, when right-clicked, has its own smelting menu where smelting operations can be done. It consists of one field for the object that will be smelted, one field for the fuel and one field for the output object. Wood, wooden planks, sticks, coal and lava buckets (plus chests, workbenches, bookshelves and fences, none of which are very efficient) are all fuels. Each smelting operation takes 10 seconds. Furnaces resemble dispensers, but the two blocks have different uses and crafting recipes.

A pickaxe is required to pick up the furnace. Items inside a furnace will be destroyed when the furnace is destroyed.

Smelting will work when the smelting menu is closed, as long as there are still objects to smelt and there is enough fuel. The fire icon diminishes to represent the fuel burn time. When the fire icon diminishes fully, another fuel item is consumed and the heat is refilled. If all objects are smelted, the furnace will stop using additional fuel. If there is no fuel left, the furnace will become inactive. If a smelting process was running, it will be cancelled and must be redone.

Crafting

Ingredients Input → Output
Cobblestone Template:Crafting grid

Smelting

Template:Furnace grid

Input » Output
File:Crafting square Iron (Ore).png Iron Ore Flame Iron File:Crafting square Iron (Ingot).png
File:Crafting square Gold (Ore).png Gold Ore Flame Gold File:Crafting square Gold (Ingot).png
File:Crafting square Sand.png Sand Flame Glass File:Crafting square Glass.png
File:Crafting square Cobblestone.png Cobblestone Flame Stone File:Crafting square Stone.png
File:Crafting square Raw Porkchop.png Raw Porkchop Flame Cooked Porkchop File:Crafting square Cooked Porkchop.png
File:Crafting square Clay.png Clay Flame Clay Brick File:Crafting square Clay Brick.png
File:Crafting square Raw Fish.png Raw Fish Flame Cooked Fish File:Crafting square Cooked Fish.png
File:Crafting square Wood.png Wood Flame Charcoal File:Crafting square Coal (Item).png
File:Crafting square Cactus.png Cactus Flame Cactus Green File:Crafting square Cactus Green.png

Fuel efficiency

Fuel Burning Time Number of
Operations
per Fuel
Amount to
Light a Furnace
All Night
Seconds per
Wood Block[a]
File:Crafting square Coal (Item).png Coal
80s
8
6.75
-
File:Crafting square Coal (Item).png Charcoal
80s
8
6.75
up to 70s[b]
File:Crafting square Wooden Plank.png Wooden Plank
15s
1.5
36
60s
File:Crafting square Stick.png Stick
5s
0.5
108
40s
File:Crafting square Fence.png Fence
15s
1.5
36
40s
File:Crafting square Wooden Stairs.png Wooden Stairs
15s
1.5
36
26.67s
File:Crafting square Wood.png Wood
15s
1.5
36
15s
File:Crafting square Crafting Table.png Crafting Table
15s
1.5
36
15s
File:Crafting square Bookshelf.png Bookshelf
15s
1.5
36
10s
File:Crafting square Chest.png Chest
15s
1.5
36
7.5s
File:Crafting square Jukebox.png Jukebox
15s
1.5
36
7.5s
File:Crafting square Lava Bucket.png Lava Bucket[c]
1000s
100
0.54
-
  1. This column is the unit-of-wood-equivalent. Calculation made once the fuel item is converted back to wood.
  2. The fuel cost of turning a wood block into charcoal (1/8 of a second charcoal item) is already deducted from this amount.
  3. Note that using a Lava Bucket will not only use the lava, but destroy the bucket as well.

As a building material

Furnaces take more time to destroy than other blocks. However, since they take eight blocks of cobblestone to create, they are an inefficient building material. They are also weaker against TNT than ordinary stone or cobblestone.

Tips and tricks

  • 8 coals will smelt an entire stack of 64 blocks. 43 wooden planks are the next best thing - 43 wooden planks are capable of generating 64.5 smelted blocks. If you want to be really efficient and not lose that half-plank to nothing, put in 44 wooden planks, then take the first two smelted blocks out, and put two extra unsmelted blocks in.
  • Remember that meat (like other food items) won't stack. This means that 1 coal will fuel between 6 and 7 units of meat, depending on how fast you are with re-loading the furnace. Sticks come in handy, as two sticks should be enough to cook an eighth unit of meat without too much fuel left over.
  • The bonus of using planks is that they are a renewable resource. While there is an abundance of coal in many cave systems, the ever expanding distances to find new deposits quickly outweigh the increased burning duration. Trees, however, can be regrown. See tree farming. Also, after the Beta 1.2 update, wood can be smelted into charcoal with identical properties to coal.
  • A single bucket of lava will allow for smelting of 100 blocks. The largest stack of blocks is 64. Considering that each smelting operation takes 10 seconds, to maximize the efficiency of a lava bucket, place a lava bucket with 64 blocks of unsmelted material (such as sand, cobblestone, etc) and return between 6 minutes and 10 minutes 40 seconds later to remove 36 smelted blocks and insert 36 more unsmelted blocks.
  • Furnaces can provide light if you've run out of torches. (And they can make charcoal for use in torches.)
  • For large project you can use more than one furnace, it is not uncommon to see a wall of furnace near a large project, not used all the time, but to reduce the amount of time it takes to smelt a large number of items. When you’re working at this scale you should really be using Charcoal or coal.

Trivia

  • As of the Halloween update, furnaces will face towards the player when placed.[1]
  • Furnaces can be used as a temporary light source.
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