How to make smooth stone in Minecraft: two smelts, no blast furnace
Smooth stone is cobblestone smelted twice, and a blast furnace cannot do either step. The 26.3 recipes, the fuel for a stack, and the Silk Touch shortcut.
Smooth stone has no crafting recipe. It is made in a furnace, from stone — and stone is itself made in a furnace, from cobblestone. So a block of smooth stone is cobblestone smelted twice. Both recipes come from the Java 26.3 datapack:
| recipe file | input | output | cook time | XP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
stone.json | minecraft:cobblestone | minecraft:stone | 200 ticks (10 s) | 0.1 |
smooth_stone.json | minecraft:stone | minecraft:smooth_stone | 200 ticks (10 s) | 0.1 |
One smooth stone from cobblestone is therefore 20 seconds of furnace time and 0.2 XP.
The blast furnace will not help
Both recipes are of type minecraft:smelting. A blast furnace only accepts minecraft:blasting recipes, and there are 25 of those in 26.3 — every one of them an ore, a raw metal, ancient debris, or iron, gold and copper gear melted down to nuggets. Stone is not among them, so smooth stone is a plain-furnace job at plain-furnace speed. The smoker is no better; it only cooks food.
The irony is that a blast furnace is built from smooth stone:
I I I I = minecraft:iron_ingot
I X I X = minecraft:furnace
# # # # = minecraft:smooth_stone → 1 × minecraft:blast_furnaceSkipping the first smelt
Mining ordinary stone with a pickaxe drops cobblestone. Mining it with a Silk Touch pickaxe drops the stone block itself, which is one smelt away from smooth stone instead of two. On a big order that halves the furnace time.
Smooth stone does not need Silk Touch at all: any pickaxe drops it as itself. So a smooth-stone floor can be picked up and moved without losing the work.
Fuel for a stack
Every item smelted costs 200 ticks of fuel, and a stack of 64 smooth stone from cobblestone is 128 smelts. What that costs, using the burn times the 26.3 data files give each fuel:
| fuel | burn time | items per piece | pieces for 64 smooth stone |
|---|---|---|---|
| coal or charcoal | 1,600 ticks | 8 | 16 |
| block of coal | 16,000 ticks | 80 | 2 (with 32 smelts to spare) |
| lava bucket | 20,000 ticks | 100 | 2 |
| blaze rod | 2,400 ticks | 12 | 11 |
| dried kelp block | 4,001 ticks | 20 | 7 |
| any planks | 300 ticks | 1.5 | 86 |
Time is the real cost: 128 smelts at 10 seconds each is over 21 minutes in one furnace. Eight furnaces fed in parallel bring it under three.
What smooth stone is for
| recipe | ingredients | result |
|---|---|---|
| blast furnace | 5 iron ingots, 1 furnace, 3 smooth stone | 1 blast furnace |
| smooth stone slab (crafting table) | 3 smooth stone in a row | 6 slabs |
| smooth stone slab (stonecutter) | 1 smooth stone | 2 slabs |
| armor stand | 6 sticks, 1 smooth stone slab | 1 armor stand |
The slab is made from smooth stone, so every armor stand also costs half a smooth stone — two furnace passes of cobblestone for a single slab.
If the smooth stone is going into a build, the Material Calculator reads a .litematic, .schem or structure file and expands every block back to what it is made from, smelting steps included, so a smooth-stone floor shows up as the cobblestone you actually need to mine.