Iron and Gold are an essential part of any miner’s stead in our favorite block building game. Whether it be armor, Unfortunately, raw ore can’t be used for much, and isn’t the best use of your haul. Because of this, we have created new and ingenious technology to smelt our ore in the most efficient way possible. The Blast Furnace! Today, we’re going to go over Blast Furnaces, how to make them, and how you could use them. Let’s begin.
Blast Furnace
A blast furnace is a block that smelts ores, raw metals, iron and gold armor and tools, similar to a furnace, but at twice the speed. It also serves as an armorer’s job site block. Blast furnaces are basically upgraded furnaces with the added caveat of not being able to smelt anything other than metals.
But why would you want this block? Despite the fact that Blast furnaces can only smelt raw ore, armor, tools, or chainmail, they also serve as the counterpart to smokers. Smokers are also an upgraded version of the furnace that only cooks food faster, but has the inability to smelt ores or anything else. Like most blocks, however, we’ll need to make it ourselves. Technically, you can find blast furnaces in armorer houses inside villages and stuff, but the crafting recipe is cheap enough, so we’ll go with that. If you do happen to find one, however, make sure you use a pickaxe to mine it, as anything else will cause it to not drop.
How to make a Blast Furnace in Minecraft
Since this is an upgraded version of the furnace, you’re going to need one of those. Other than that, you’ll simply need
5 iron ingots
1 Furnace
3 Smoothstone block
Unique Mechanics
In Java Edition, a blast furnace can be ‘locked’ by setting its Lock tag using the /data command. If a blast furnace’s Lock tag is not blank, the blast furnace cannot be opened unless the player is holding an item with the same name as the Lock tag’s text. For example, to lock a blast furnace at (0.64,0) so that the blast furnace can’t be unlocked unless the player is holding an item named “Apex Key”, use /data merge block 0 64 0 {Lock: “Apex Key”}.
Also, by default, the GUI of a blast furnace and every other workbench type block is labeled whatever the block is named. This means that the name can be customized by naming it in an anvil before placing it. Then, when using the block, you will see whatever you named the blast furnace as the title of the block.
Reality Check
What exactly is a blast furnace? Well, a blast furnace (in real life) is an industrial variant of a furnace used to produce metals, generally iron. The ‘blast’ part refers to the combustion air being forced or supplied above atmospheric pressure. For blast furnaces to burn so hot, they need a constant supply of oxygen, so air is pumped into the bottom at a crazy fast rate.
In contrast, air furnaces are naturally aspirated, which essentially means the gas is allowed to naturally exit through a chimney or opening. This is much easier to manage, but does not allow for nearly as hot of a temperature. Just like in Minecraft, blast furnaces are utilized for smelting materials with an extremely high melting point, like metals. Very interesting stuff!
Conclusion
Welp, that’s all! The blast furnace is a fairly simplistic yet useful tool when it comes to smelting ore. While auto smelting is obviously the most efficient use of your time, if you’re just looking for a vanilla solution to slow smelting while also housing a block that has a unique aesthetic, the blast furnace is for you. In any case, I hope you learned something about this block, and have a great day!
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