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Wood (previously known as Log) is a naturally occurring block fundamental to the crafting of many blocks and tools in the game. They have a skin resembling bark on the four side faces, and a crosscut face on top and bottom. Only the normal oak logs are available in chunks generated before the Beta 1.2 update and all previous versions, whilst pine and birch will generate in newer chunks. Wood is greatly abundant in naturally-generated maps, as it is used as the foundation for trees. Wood can be chopped by hand, but using an Axe is faster. Wood is also flammable.

Of the current wood types, birch is the rarest type. They are often used to make plants, trees and wooden cabins. In Survival Test, wood blocks drop 3 - 5 Wooden Planks when mined. In Indev, Infdev, Alpha, and Beta, mining a wood block will drop a wood block instead. This allows the use of wood as a building material and is craftable into planks.

Wood's only crafting use is to be made into four Wooden Planks. In addition, wood can be smelted in a Furnace to make Charcoal as a substitute for Coal.

There are currently four varieties of wood. One is the normal wood (Oak); another is Birch, which is a lighter color; a third type, Spruce, resembles Oak but is dark in color and grows in colder biomes; the fourth type, Jungle, resembles Oak wood with bark aligned horizontally, and solely occurs in Jungle Biomes. Wood from different types of trees will produce different colors of Wooden Planks when crafted and will not stack in the inventory. Birch trees have slightly duller colored leaves than regular trees, pine trees have pine needles, and jungle leaves are leafy with fruit-like shapes.

The fourth type of wood solely occurs in Jungle Biomes, and comprises trees exclusive to them. The tallest trees have this type of wood in 2x2 dimensions instead of the normal 1x1.

As of Minecraft 12w30d, logs became rotatable.

Occurrence

File:2012-01-21 17.50.50.png

A pile of wood and naturally generated trees in a swampland.

Besides forming trees, wooden blocks can also be found in NPC Villages where they form the edges of farms and are also used in the corners and roofs of a few small huts.

As a Crafting Ingredient

Ingredients Input » Output
Wood Template:Grid/Crafting Table

Uses of Wood

The following table presents the amount of wood needed to produce an even multiple of a given item with no waste left over, and the quantity produced:

Product Number of wood
blocks needed
Product
amount
Ratio
Boat 5 4 80%
Bowl 3 16 533.33%
Charcoal* 0 crafted, 1 cooked 1 100%
Chest 2 1 50%
Crafting Table 1 1 100%
Door 3 2 66.67%
Fence 3 8 266.67%
Fence Gate 1 1 100%
Ladder 7 24 342.86%
Plank 1 4 400%
Sign 8 13 162.5%
Stick 1 8 800%
Torch* 1 crafted, 8 cooked 32 355.56%
Trapdoor 3 4 133.33%
Wooden Axe 7 8 114.29%
Wooden Hoe 3 4 133.33%
Wooden Pickaxe 7 8 114.29%
Wooden Pressure Plate 1 2 200%
Wooden Shovel 1 2 200%
Wooden Slab 3 24 800%
Wooden Stair 3 8 266.67%
Wooden Sword 5 8 160%

* Requires the burning of wood into charcoal in a furnace. Thus, you will need 8 cobblestone and burning material. The cobblestone and fuel are ignored for the purpose of conversion.

History

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  • Called Log when first introduced, Wood was one of the first blocks in Minecraft, first seen in Minecraft Classic Creative mode 0.0.14a.
  • From Alpha 1.2.0 to Beta 1.3, wood would only be destroyed by fire if it had several sides simultaneously burning. If only one side was burning, the fire and wood block would last forever. This was a bug but made for nice fireplaces. Netherrack can also be used this way, as it burns forever. In Beta 1.4 wood and Wooden Planks will burn and be destroyed if any one of the sides are lit on fire. This can happen in 1.6.6 again but may not happen to all wood.
  • Following the 1.2.4 update, different types of Wood produced different colors of Planks when crafted.
  • The fourth type of wood, Jungle wood, with horizontally cracked bark, was introduced in Snapshot 12w03a.
  • As of 12w30d, all types of blocks of wood are now placed with the inner side facing to the player, depending on where somebody stands when placing it (similarly to pistons).

Trivia

  • In real life, the number of rings on the inside of a tree counts the age of the tree. If one counts the rings of a wood block, the sum is two years.
  • It is advisable to use Wooden Planks as fuel instead of wood, as they share the same burn time. However, it is advisable, if you do have wood, to smelt the wood and use charcoal as fuel.
  • It is possible to manually convert a regular tree into a birch tree, if it has no branches. The top of the tree will be a cross shape made of leaves, and due to the way leaves decay, by placing a wood block on all sides of the cross they will remain intact. After that, break down the tree trunk and swap it with birch wood, then remove the pieces of wood on the top of the tree to create a birch tree. The leaves, though, will remain oak tree leaves.
  • Picking up a block of Wood, typically one of the first things a player does in a world, gives them the "Getting Wood" achievement.
  • Birch and pine trees weren't a renewable resource until the addition of birch and pine saplings.
  • Chopping wood using a tool with the Silk Touch enchantment causes it to drop a regular (oak) wood block, regardless of the type of wood chopped. This is a bug.
  • Although wood is usually considered renewable, there is the chance for a tree grown from a sapling to drop 0 saplings, so if you begin with a set number of trees, it is potentially possible that all of them and their planted saplings will drop 0 saplings, depleting the resource, in practice, this is almost impossible due to the low probability of a tree dropping 0 saplings.
  • When a world that has a jungle biome in it is opened in 1.1 instead of 1.2.1 or further, the wood and leaf types will be changed into oak wood and leaves.
  • Jungle saplings seem to be rarer than other saplings, even birch. When you mine a 1x1 tree, you will get at least 0-1 saplings back. When you mine a 2x2 jungle tree, you will get at least 3 saplings back.
  • Wood can be found above layer 128.

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