Smooth Stone is what you get when you smelt regular Stone in a furnace. It has a clean, flat look with no cracks or texture variation, which makes it an excellent block for decoration and some modern-style builds. Smooth stones are also required for crafting blast furnaces, if you plan on processing ores faster at any point, you will need it regardless.
The catch is that you can’t get it in one step as Smooth Stone requires two rounds of smelting. To get it, you need to mine stone blocks which will give you cobblestone blocks, smelt the cobblestone in a furnace to get back regular stone, then smelt the stone again to get smooth stone. This guide walks through the full process with exact materials, common mistakes to avoid, and what you can actually do with the blocks once you have them.
What You Will Need
Before you start, gather the following:
- A pickaxe: any material will work for getting Cobblestone.
- Stone or Cobblestone: mine stone to get cobblestone, or obtain stone via other methods to smelt it into smooth stone.
- A Furnace: crafted with 8 cobblestones in a ring pattern inside a crafting table.
- Fuel: anything that can be used to fuel a furnace, preferably coal, otherwise charcoal or wood logs.
How to Make Smooth Stone Step by Step
Step 1: Mine Cobblestone
Break stone blocks with any pickaxe and you get cobblestone as the drop. Next, decide how much Smooth Stone you want and collect that amount of cobblestones. Keep in mind you need to smelt it twice, so your fuel costs are doubled compared to a single smelting job. This means that for making 64 Smooth Stone, you would need 64 cobblestones and 16 pieces of coal.
Step 2: Craft a Furnace
Open your crafting table and fill every slot except the center with Cobblestone – that is 8 Cobblestone arranged around the outside of the 3x3 grid. Next, place the Furnace down somewhere accessible.
Step 3: Turn Smelt Cobblestone into Stone
Open the Furnace, put your Cobblestone in the top input slot, and place fuel in the bottom slot. Each item takes 10 seconds to smelt, so a full stack of 64 takes about 10 minutes with a steady fuel supply. The output is regular stone – not smooth stone yet.
Step 4: Make Smelt Stone into Smooth Stone
Take the stone you just made and put it back into the furnace. Add more fuel and let it run again. Each stone smelts into one smooth stone. When it finishes, grab the smooth stone from the output slot.
That’s it. Two smelting passes: Cobblestone to Stone, then Stone to Smooth Stone.
Smooth Stone Making Fuel Tips
Coal and charcoal are the most efficient fuels. One piece smelts exactly 8 items, so for 64 items you need 8 fuel per smelting round – 16 in total across both rounds. Wood logs smelt 1.5 items each, which works in a pinch but burns through fuel quickly.
If you need a lot of smooth stone fast, try running multiple furnaces in parallel. Each one smelts at the same speed, but with three furnaces going at once you can process three times the stone in the same time. Just keep the fuel stocked in each one.
What to Do with Smooth Stone
Crafting a Blast Furnace
The Blast Furnace recipe takes 5 Iron Ingots, 1 Furnace, and 3 Smooth Stone. Place the three smooth stone blocks across the bottom row, the Furnace in the center slot, and Iron Ingots filling the top row and the two side slots in the middle row. The Blast Furnace smelts ores and metal items at double the speed of a regular Furnace.
Making Smooth Stone Slabs
Line up 3 Smooth Stone blocks in a row on a crafting table and you get 6 smooth stone slabs. These are great for low walls, pathways, and layered floor designs. You can also use a Stonecutter: feed in 1 Smooth Stone and get 2 Smooth Stone Slabs out, which is more efficient than if you are cutting slabs individually.
Building Things
Smooth Stone works well anywhere you want a clean gray surface. Common uses include flooring in modern or industrial builds, pillar accents, kitchen countertops in house builds, and as a neutral background block that lets other colors or textures stand out around it. Its uniform tone makes it easy to pair with almost anything.
Mods That Work Well with Smooth Stone
If you want to expand what you can do with Smooth Stone, or just speed up the smelting process that produces it, these mods are worth checking out.
Iron Furnaces
Iron Furnaces adds upgraded furnaces that smelt items faster than the normal furnace in Minecraft. It is a solid choice for players who want a quicker and more efficient way to handle large amounts of smelting.
The different furnace tiers give you a simple way to improve your setup as your world grows. It keeps the idea familiar, but makes everyday furnace use much more convenient.
Better Furnaces Reforged
Better Furnaces Reforged adds many upgraded furnaces that smelt items faster than the normal furnace. It is made for players who want a bigger and better smelting setup while still keeping that familiar Minecraft feel.
It also gives you more furnace options as your world grows, so you can move from simple upgrades to much stronger ones later on. The overall idea is easy to understand – more furnaces lead to more choices and faster smelting.
Smelt All Stone Blocks in Blast Furnaces
Smelt All Stone Blocks lets you use the blast furnace to smelt many stone blocks faster than a normal furnace. It covers blocks like cobblestone, stone, sandstone, basalt, nether bricks, quartz, and netherrack, so it makes handling common building blocks like smooth stone much quicker and more convenient.
It is a nice pick for players who want a faster way to work through large amounts of stone without changing Minecraft too much. The mod also gives you some freedom to decide which stone blocks should work this way.
How to Install Minecraft Mods
You can install the above mods automatically using the CurseForge app or manually by placing the mod files within your game’s mods folder. Both methods allow you to easily add custom features and enhancements into your vanilla Minecraft experience.If you want to learn more, you can read our detailed guide on how to install Minecraft mods.
Common Issues and Quick Fixes
Trying to smelt Cobblestone directly into Smooth Stone
This is the most common mistake. Cobblestone turns into Stone first, not Smooth Stone. If you put Cobblestone into a Furnace, you will only get Stone, so you need to smelt it a second time to make Smooth Stone.
Using a Blast Furnace for stone smelting in vanilla Minecraft
A Blast Furnace does not smelt Stone or Cobblestone in vanilla Minecraft. It only works with ores, raw metals, and certain metal tools and armor. You would instead need to use a regular Furnace unless you are using a mod that changes this.
Breaking Smooth Stone without a pickaxe
If you place a Smooth Stone and break it without a pickaxe, it drops nothing. Always use a pickaxe if you want to keep the block.
Missing dependencies or required files
Some mods need extra files to run. If a mod is not working after install, check its page and make sure all required dependencies are installed.
Expecting Iron Furnaces to change the Smooth Stone recipe
Iron Furnaces makes smelting faster by adding better furnaces, but it does not replace the normal Smooth Stone process. You still have to go from Cobblestone to Stone, then Stone to Smooth Stone.
Expecting Better Furnaces Reforged to change vanilla recipes
Better Furnaces Reforged gives you faster furnace options, but it does not change the basic idea of making Smooth Stone. You still need to smelt Stone into Smooth Stone unless you are also using another mod that changes stone smelting rules.
Using Smelt All Stone Blocks in Blast Furnaces and not seeing changes
This mod lets Blast Furnaces handle many stone blocks, including the blocks used to make Smooth Stone faster. If it does not seem to work, check that the mod is installed on the correct loader and that you are playing with the mod enabled.