Furnace
| Type |
Solid Block |
| Requirements |
None |
| Physics |
No |
| Transparency |
No |
| Luminance |
Yes, 13 (when active) |
| Blast resistance |
17.5 |
| Tool | |
| Renewable |
Yes |
| Stackable |
Yes (64) |
| Flammable |
No |
| First appearance | |
| Tile Entity ID |
Furnace |
| Data values |
|
A Furnace (sometimes referred to as an oven) is used to heat blocks and turn them into other items. Furnaces are considered one of the fundamental blocks required to advance in Survival mode. Furnaces can naturally occur in NPC villages. Before the furnace appeared, smelting was accomplished by creating a fire and dropping the ores into it. Furnaces are currently available in all versions of Minecraft except for Classic.
Contents |
[edit] Usage
| Input » Output | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
The furnace, when right-clicked, has its own menu where heating 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, Wood Planks, wooden pressure plates, coal, charcoal, blaze rods and lava buckets (plus chests, crafting tables, bookshelves, sticks, saplings, jukeboxes, note blocks, locked chests, wooden stairs, trapdoors 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 similar crafting recipes.
Smelting will continue to work when the smelting menu is closed, as long as there are still objects to heat 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. The furnace will also stop if the output field contains a full stack, or if it contains a different item (e.g., trying to smelt gold ore with iron ingots in the output). 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.
Gold and iron ores can be smelted into ingots. Furnaces can also be used to smelt redstone ore, lapis lazuli ore, coal ore, and diamond ore (obtained with the Silk Touch enchantment) and returns 1 redstone, lapis lazuli, coal, or diamond respectively.
When the items smelted in a furnace are collected, they drop experience orbs equal to the number of items in the stack. This makes furnaces a reliable (if slow) early source of experience.
Furnaces when active have a luminance of 13 and can provide light if you've run out of torches, and they can make charcoal for use in torches. Through this they can essentially be used as fireplaces (since there is no specific fireplace block currently in the game) by placing lots of long-lasting fuel items in it (lava buckets for an example), and then "lighting" the fireplace by placing a burnable item into it.
When holding sneak, the player can place blocks and items (like redstone, repeaters, levers and torches) directly onto furnaces.
[edit] Natural occurrence
Furnaces can be found inside NPC villages. These naturally occurring furnaces are found in the blacksmith workshops, which contain two furnaces. They have, however, so far been found completely empty.
[edit] Crafting
| Ingredients | Input » Output | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cobblestone |
|
[edit] As a crafting ingredient
| Ingredients | Input » Output | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Furnace, Minecart |
|
[edit] Fuel efficiency
Sleeping while smelting/cooking items will not speed up the process.
| Fuel | Burning time (seconds) |
Number of operations per fuel |
Amount to light a furnace all night |
Seconds per wood block (log)[fn 1] |
Amount needed to burn a stack (64) of items |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80 | 8 | 6.75 | - | 8 | |
| 80 | 8 | 6.75 | up to 69s[fn 2] | 8 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 15s | 43 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 60s | 43 | |
| 7.5 | 0.75 | 48 | 60s | 86 | |
| 5 | 0.5 | 108 | - | 128 | |
| 10 | 1 | 54 | 5s to 10s | 64 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 30s | 43 | |
| 5 | 0.5 | 108 | 40s | 128 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 40s | 43 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 15s | 43 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 40s | 43 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 20s | 43 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 15s | 43 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 10s | 43 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 7.5s | 43 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 6.9s | 43 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 40s | 43 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 7.5s | 43 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | 7.5s | 43 | |
| 15 | 1.5 | 36 | - | 43 | |
| 120 | 12 | 4.5 | - | 5.3 | |
| 800 | 80 | 0.68 | - | 0.8 | |
| 1000 | 100 | 0.54 | - | 0.64 |
- ↑
This column is the unit-of-wood-equivalent. Calculation made once the fuel item is converted back to wood.
- ↑
The fuel cost of turning a wood block into charcoal (1/8 of a second charcoal item, 1/64 of a third) is already deducted from this amount.
[edit] Tips and tricks
- The bonus of using charcoal or other forms of wood is that they are a renewable resource, and capable of being made by 2 pieces of wood (1 ingredient and 1 fuel per coal). While there is an abundance of coal in many cave systems, it is still necessary to search out new deposits. Trees, however, can be regrown (see tree farming).
- 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.
- Because lava can smelt 100 blocks, you can save coal and wood by using lava buckets as your source and smelting in the nether near a lava ocean. Just watch out for the native mobs.
- For a large project, you can use more than one furnace, it is not uncommon to see a wall of furnaces 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 working at this scale, the most efficient fuel would be coal (or charcoal). The most efficient method is to use about 16-32 furnaces and use 4 coal/charcoal for fuel and 32 of the blocks that need to be smelted. This can convert an entire inventory's worth of resources in the timespan of around 10 minutes.
- Since all types of logs burn for the same amount of time as wooden planks, converting logs to planks is a quick and easy way to quadruple the burning time (instead of 16 logs burning for 240 seconds. Converting them to 64 planks would burn for 960 seconds, however, converting 16 logs to charcoal using 2 charcoal from previously cooked logs will have a net burn time of 1,120 seconds, even if one log is converted to wood planks.
- Smelting can be a tedious task, especially when you have a load of items to smelt, put in and take out. See Tutorials/Automatic Smelter.
[edit] Achievements
- Main article: Achievements
| Icon | Achievement | In-game description | Prerequisites | Actual requirements (if different) | Version restriction | Xbox points earned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hot Topic | Construct a furnace out of eight stone blocks | Time to Mine! | Pick up a Furnace from a Crafting Table. However, a single Furnace is made out of eight Cobblestone blocks, instead of eight Stone blocks. | None | 15G |
[edit] Video
[edit] History
| Indev | ||
|---|---|---|
| Prior to the addition of furnaces[1], the player started with a bunch of TNT and Flint and Steel items could be smelted by dropping items on the ground and then burning them with flint and steel. This was the only way to smelt ores. | ||
| February 19, 2010 | Furnace added. | |
| February 23, 2010 | The first smeltable item is cobblestone, which can be smelted into smooth stone. | |
| Alpha | ||
| 0.2.0 | Furnaces will face towards the player when placed.[2] Before the update, they faced away when placed. | |
| Beta | ||
| 1.2 | The top of furnaces have a texture similar to cobblestone. They used to have a texture exactly the same as stone. | |
| 1.8 | You can now cook up to 64 pieces of food at a time.[3] Since food can stack, it's possible to cook them like any other item. Before 1.8, the player could only cook 1 piece of food at a time (e.g. a single porkchop). | |
| 1.9pre1 | Furnaces do not take as long to destroy. | |
| Official release | ||
| 1.2.5pre | Shift+clicking can be used to put items into furnaces more easily. | |
| 1.3.1 | 12w18a | Wooden tools work in furnaces as one full furnace use. |
| 12w22a | Smelting various ores in furnaces now rewards players with experience points. | |
| When using lava for fuel you get the bucket back. | ||
| 1.4.2 | 12w39a | Previously, furnaces lit up blocks all around them, this snapshot made furnaces light up blocks only in front of them.[4] (images showing difference) Its light value remained 13, but the light is only emitted from the block's front surface. |
| 12w40a | The previous change was reverted until the new lighting system could be optimized. | |
| 1.4.6 | 12w49a | When holding sneak, the player can place blocks and items (like redstone, repeaters, and levers) directly onto furnaces. |
| 1.5 | 13w01a | Added a Hopper block, which can place and take out items from furnaces. |
| 13w02a | Furnaces renamed using the anvil will display the new name in their GUI where the normal name used to appear. | |
| Pocket Edition Alpha | ||
| 0.3.2 | Furnaces added, meaning that every available block and item can now be gathered, crafted or smelted into. (no more unlimited items). | |
[edit] Issues
Issues relating to "Furnace" are maintained on Mojira. Report issues there.
[edit] Trivia
- Furnaces function as multiple devices combined into one block. Furnaces are really Bloomeries and blast furnaces (for smelting ores), an oven (for baking and cooking), a charcoal pit (for the charring of wood) and a kiln (for baking of clay).
- Furnaces can be used as an early-game XP farm, but on the one hand cobblestone, food, etc. don't give much XP, on the other, it will take a while to produce the materials for an Enchantment Table. Later, smelting accumulated ores etc. becomes a way to controllably gain experience in fair-sized chunks; a stack of iron gives 45 XP, while a stack of gold gives 64 XP.
- Furnaces can be used for BUD Switches by placing a fuel and burnable item, making it become a on-state furnace.
- Furnaces can also be used as a long timer using a BUD switch because each item burns for 10 seconds with a max of 64 items you can make a timer for 10 minutes and 40 seconds depending on the fuel source used and if you use lava you can get 16 minutes and 40 seconds and with a hopper you can make it much longer.
- The furnace is featured in the "Hot Topic" achievement and is required for the "Acquire Hardware" and "Delicious Fish" achievements, because you need to smelt iron and cook fish for those achievements.


