How to Smelt in Minecraft

Have you ever gone mining and found iron, but when you mined the iron, it dropped the whole block instead of giving you ingots? To get the ingots, you have to smelt the iron!

Crafting a Furnace

The first step to smelt something is to craft a furnace. A furnace is a block where you can put things that can be smelted into it, along with something to burn.

Furnace crafting recipe.

Using Your Furnace

Once you craft your furnace, place it on the ground and right click. A menu will open up.

Smelting iron blocks into iron ingots.

In the top slot of your furnace, you will put what you want to smelt. In the bottom part, you will put what you will burn. For example, I put iron blocks to smelt and coal to burn. The smelted item will appear in the box to the right. 

For something to smelt, you need to fill both slots. When adding items to burn, once they have burnt, you cannot use them again.

Items You Can Smelt

  • Iron blocks
  • Gold blocks
  • Sand
  • Cactus
  • Cobblestone
  • Wood
  • Raw food items
  • Netherrack
  • Clay

Items You Can Burn

  • Coal
  • Charcoal
  • Wood
  • Wooden items or tools
  • Saplings
  • Sticks
  • Blazerods
  • Lava in a bucket