Smelting

Smelting (or Melting, Baking, Cooking, Burning, Producing) is a method of producing refined goods in Minecraft. It has the same idea as Crafting; one must put in acceptable ingredients, and a corresponding output will be given. However, smelting utilizes Furnace blocks which have a unique interface. When right-clicked, a menu will come up where heating operations can be done. It consists of one field for the object that will be heated, one field for the fuel and one field for the output object.

To smelt something, an input material and fuel must be loaded in the Furnace. It will begin Smelting on its own and will continue to work if the menu is closed and the player leaves. When the Furnace begins heating, it will consume one piece of fuel and the fire gauge will fill up. As the input smelts, the fire gauge will slowly recede until it is gone, and then the next piece of fuel will be used. If there is no more fuel left, the furnace will be interrupted and the current item being smelted will be left raw. However, if fuel is burning and runs out of input, the fire gauge will continue to burn down, wasting the burn time left. Once the fire gauge is out, no more fuel will be used.

As things smelt, an arrow icon represents the cooking process. Each smelting operation takes 10 seconds and the progress will be shown on the arrow. If the furnace runs out of fuel before the arrow is filled up, the input won't be smelted and will have to be redone. When the arrow fills up completely, one input item will be put in the output field as a output item.

If the player leaves Furnaces smelting and goes so far that the Chunks unload, the Smelting process will halt until they return. Smelting will also pause if one leaves the dimension the Furnaces are located. If the player sleeps in a bed while a furnace is smelting, the furnace's progress will be the same as if the bed hadn't been used and no additional time had passed. The reason for this is because when you sleep in a bed, no time actually goes by, but instead the game sets the time of day to morning.

[edit] Food

Name	Ingredients	Input » Output	Description
Cooked Porkchop	Raw Porkchop + Fuel		Fills , while raw only fills .
Steak	Raw Beef + Fuel		Fills , while raw only fills .
Cooked Chicken	Raw Chicken + Fuel		Fills , while raw only fills and has a chance for food poisoning.
Cooked Fish	Raw Fish + Fuel		Fills , while raw only fills .

[edit] Ores and materials

Name	Ingredients	Input » Output	Description
Iron Ingot	Iron Ore + Fuel		Used to craft various items, including iron swords, iron picks (or pickaxes), and iron blocks.
Gold Ingot	Gold Ore + Fuel		Used to craft various items. See gold ingot
Diamond	Diamond Ore + Fuel		Used to craft various items. This smelting is unnecessary as Diamond Ore may be converted into Diamonds by breaking the block with an iron pickaxe. Additionally, multiple diamonds may be extracted from ore by using a Fortune-enchanted pickaxe.
Lapis Lazuli	Lapis Lazuli Ore + Fuel		Used as a dye, and to craft a Lapis Lazuli Block. Lapis Lazuli may instead be extracted from ore by ordinary mining, with a chance of multiple drops; smelting Lapis Lazuli Ore is wasteful as it only yields one item and requires use of a Silk Touch-enchanted pickaxe to obtain the ore in raw form.
Redstone Dust	Redstone Ore + Fuel		Used to create redstone circuits. Redstone Dust may instead be extracted from ore by ordinary mining, with a chance of multiple drops; smelting Redstone Ore is wasteful as it only yields one item and requires use of a Silk Touch-enchanted pickaxe to obtain the ore in raw form.
Coal	Coal Ore + Fuel		Used as a fuel and as lighting. This smelting is unnecessary as Coal Ore may be converted into Coal by breaking the block with any pickaxe. Additionally, multiple Coal lumps may be extracted from ore by using a Fortune-enchanted pickaxe.
Glass	Sand + Fuel		Used to make transparent structures, like windows. Also used to craft Glass Panes and Glass Bottles.
Stone	Cobblestone + Fuel		Used as a building material, and is also used for crafting Pressure Plates, Buttons, Stone Brick blocks and Redstone Repeaters.
Clay Brick	Clay + Fuel		Used to make Brick Blocks.

[edit] Misc

Name	Ingredients	Input » Output	Description
Charcoal	Wood + Fuel		Used to craft Torches and Fire Charges and as fuel in a Furnace or in a Minecart with Furnace.
Cactus Green	Cactus + Fuel		Used as a Dye.

[edit] Fuel efficiency

Sleeping while smelting/cooking items will not speed up the process.

Fuel	Burning Time	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
Coal	80s	8	6.75	-	8
Charcoal	80s	8	6.75	up to 69s[fn 2]	8
Wooden Planks (All types)	15s	1.5	36	60s	43
Wooden Slabs (All types) Note: Not the old wooden "stone" slab	15s	1.5	36	120s	43
Sapling (All types)	5s	0.5	108	-	128
Stick	5s	0.5	108	40s	128
All wooden tools or weapons	10s	1	54	5s to 10s	64
Fence	15s	1.5	36	40s	43
Wooden Stairs	15s	1.5	36	40s	43
Trapdoor	15s	1.5	36	20s	43
Wood (All types)	15s	1.5	36	15s	43
Crafting Table	15s	1.5	36	15s	43
Bookshelf	15s	1.5	36	10s	43
Chest	15s	1.5	36	7.5s	43
Jukebox	15s	1.5	36	7.5s	43
Note Block	15s	1.5	36	7.5s	43
Huge Brown Mushroom	15s	1.5	36	-	43
Huge Red Mushroom	15s	1.5	36	-	43
Blaze Rod	120s	12	4.5	-	5.3
Lava Bucket	1000s	100	0.54	-	0.64

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, 1/64 of a third) is already deducted from this amount.

[edit] Video

[edit] History

Before the furnace appeared, smelting was accomplished by creating a fire and dropping the ore into it. During the Indev versions of Minecraft you started with a bunch of TNT and Flint and Steel which allowed you to smelt any ores before furnace was released. This method was hard and time consuming, and it is much easier to use the furnace to smelt items. Jeb has hinted at the possibility of adding portable fireplaces for use during long (nomadic) treks in which a furnace would not be feasible.^[1]

From snapshot 12w18a, wooden tools became able to be used as fuel for furnaces if players ran out of other fuel, didn't want to repair the tools or finish using them.

[edit] Trivia

• It takes 10 minutes and 40 seconds to smelt a stack of 64 items.
• Burning Wood with Wooden Planks to make Charcoal is over 5 times more efficient than using the wood itself as fuel. It is just over 1 ¹⁄₄ times more efficient than using planks.
• Note that when using a bucket of lava for smelting, the bucket vanishes when used completely.
• Jeb has stated he likes the idea of smelting Gravel to create "Stone Chunks", which could be crafted into Stone Bricks in a 2x2 grid.^[2]

[edit] See also

• Smelting on Wikipedia
• Brewing
• Crafting
• Enchanting

[edit] References

1. ↑ jebtweet:110146359503495168
2. ↑ jebtweet:144164303224836096