Smelt Iron in a Furnace

Stone tools are good. Iron tools are better — tougher, faster, and able to dig things stone can't touch. To get iron you don't craft it, you melt it. That's what a furnace is for.

(Quick note: the furnace is not the crafting table, and it's not the campfire. The campfire cooks food; the furnace melts ore into metal.)

Build a furnace

First you need cobblestone — the rough grey blocks you get from mining ordinary stone with a pickaxe. Gather eight of them.

At your crafting table, lay them in a ring with the middle left empty:

[C][C][C]
[C][ ][C]
[C][C][C]
C = Cobblestone

That makes a Furnace. Right-click to place it down.

Find and mine iron

Iron hides underground as Iron Ore — speckly stone you'll spot in caves or by digging down a little.

Important: you need at least a stone pickaxe to mine iron ore. A wooden one won't break it — so bring your stone pickaxe. Mine a few lumps of Raw Iron.

Smelt it

Right-click the furnace to open it. There are three slots:

Put iron in the top and fuel in the bottom, and the furnace lights itself — no match needed. Each lump takes about ten seconds. One lump of coal smelts loads in a row (around two dozen), so it's well worth getting some.

Take your shiny Iron Ingots out of the output slot.

Make iron tools

Back at your crafting table, use the ingots just like you used wood and stone — an iron pickaxe, iron axe, or iron sword. They last far longer, work faster, and the iron pickaxe is your ticket to the deeper, better stuff later on.

🎉 You did it

You've turned rock into metal. Iron gear is the real turning point — from "just surviving" to "properly kitted out."

→ Next: Stand Your Ground — make a sword and win a fight.

Every ore, every fuel, and exact smelt times are in the Wiki.