How to Make a Furnace in Minecraft
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Minecraft
How to Make a Furnace in Minecraft
Best Fuels and What to Smelt
The Furnace is the second block every Minecraft player builds — right after the crafting table — and it unlocks the entire smelting and cooking system. Without it, you can’t turn Iron Ore into usable Iron Ingots, which blocks almost all mid-game progression. Set one up inside your first shelter alongside your crafting table and keep fuel stocked at all times. A Blast Furnace (upgrade using Iron Ingots + regular Furnace + Smooth Stone) processes ores at double speed and is worth building once you have a reliable iron supply.
Frequently Asked Questions
⚡ Quick Answer
How to Craft a Furnace
Place 8 Cobblestone around the outside of a crafting table grid, leaving the center empty. You need to mine Stone first with any pickaxe — Stone drops Cobblestone unless you use Silk Touch. The Furnace smelts ores into metal, cooks food, and is the second essential block you build after your crafting table.
1
Craft a Wooden Pickaxe first — you need it to mine Stone. On your crafting table, place 3 Wooden Planks in the top row and 2 Sticks in the middle column below them. This takes just a few seconds with spare wood from your first tree.
2
Mine 8 Stone blocks with your Wooden Pickaxe — they drop as Cobblestone. Stone is the grey layer just below the surface dirt and is visible on cliff faces and hillsides. A few seconds of digging yields more than enough.
3
Open your crafting table and place 1 Cobblestone in every slot except the center — top row (3), middle row left and right (2), bottom row (3). Leave the middle cell empty. Collect the Furnace from the output slot.
4
Place the Furnace and right-click to open it. Put your material in the top slot (e.g. Iron Ore) and fuel in the bottom slot (Wood, Coal, Charcoal, Planks). The progress arrow fills as it smelts — each fuel type burns for different durations.
5
Collect the output from the right slot once smelting completes. You earn a small amount of XP each time you collect smelted items — useful for early XP farming before you have an enchanting setup.
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Coal is the best early fuel — each piece smelts 8 items. Mine it alongside Stone on your first underground trip. Charcoal (smelt a Wood Log) is identical to Coal and avoids mining altogether in wood-rich worlds.
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Lava Bucket is the most efficient fuel in the game — one bucket smelts 100 items. Worth using for large smelting batches once you reach the Nether or find surface lava pools. Store lava in an Iron Bucket (craft with 3 Iron Ingots).
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Smelt Iron Ore → Iron Ingots as your first priority — you need Iron for buckets, armour, tools, and dozens of crafting recipes. After Iron, smelt Gold Ore for Gold Ingots used in clocks, powered rails, and Beacons.
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Use a Smoker for cooking food — it processes food items twice as fast as a regular Furnace. Keep a Furnace for ores and a Smoker next to it for food to maximise efficiency.
Can I use any fuel in a Furnace?
Almost any wooden item burns as fuel — planks, sticks, logs, slabs, fences, and even wooden tools. Coal and Charcoal are the most efficient common fuels. Blaze Rods also burn and smelt 12 items each — decent if you have surplus Blaze Rods from the Nether.
What is the difference between a Furnace, Smoker, and Blast Furnace?
A regular Furnace handles everything. A Smoker cooks food twice as fast but can’t smelt ores. A Blast Furnace smelts ores and metal items twice as fast but can’t cook food. For maximum efficiency, use all three side by side.
Can I smelt raw ore blocks?
Yes — Raw Ore Blocks (crafted from 9 Raw Ore pieces) can be smelted directly and give 9 ingots per block. This is more fuel-efficient than smelting individual raw ores because the smelting overhead (fuel ignition) is paid once instead of nine times.
Does a Furnace stop smelting if I walk away?
No — Furnaces continue smelting while you’re away as long as they have fuel and materials loaded. You don’t need to stand near it. This makes it efficient to load up a Furnace with a large batch, go mining, and return to collect finished ingots.