Metalworking Guide

Casting Age (Copper & Bronzes)

Gathering Ore

There are currently two stone-age methods of gathering ore, running around and looking for them as items on the surface, or by using a Gold Pan.

To make a single metal tool head you will need to collect 10 pieces of small, copper-bearing ore:

Copper Ore
Native Copper	Tetrahedrite	Malachite

If you wish to make bronze¹ tools, you can follow the alloy recipe and replace some of the copper ores with the following:

Bismuthinite

Cassiterite

Sphalerite

Native Gold

Native Silver

¹ Note: Only metals that have the word bronze in their name are considered bronze. Other metals made out of the above ores that do not have bronze in their name, such as Brass, Rose Gold, and Sterling Silver are not bronzes or copper, and therefore cannot be made into tools.

Smelting

Note: The Vessel can only smelt ores. If you have turned your metals into ingots, you will need to heat them in a forge to liquefy them, or use a Crucible if you plan on making alloys.

Filling a Vessels with Ores for Bronze

A Vessel Containing Molten Bronze

Copper

A Ceramic Vessel can be used to smelt Native Copper, Malachite and Tetrahedrite ore into pure molten copper metal. To do this, fill the vessel with ore (stacks of different ores may be placed together in the same vessel) and then fire it in a kiln.

After the firing, retrieve the vessel from the kiln and right-click it to open up its GUI. You will see that now instead of the usual four slots the vessel has only one and contains text describing the amount of metal it contains. This metal will remain liquid for about 10 Minecraft hours, starting after the firing completes. If the metal inside solidifies, the GUI will not open and you must fire it in a pit kiln again to re-melt it. Note: Vessels with molten metal inside will have a white, "Liquid" tooltip on them.

Bronzes

A Ceramic Vessel can also be used to create Bronze, Black Bronze and Bismuth Bronze.

Before Firing: Place the necessary ores into a Ceramic Vessel, in the proper proportions for the desired type of bronze. For example, if you wanted to create normal Bronze then you would put copper ore (any combination of Native Copper, Malachite or Tetrahedrite) and Cassiterite into the vessel. For each alloy there is a range of proportions which will produce the desired alloy so you don't have to hit an exact percentage, just be within the range.

After Firing: If you got the proportions right then when you right-click the vessel it will open up the same single-slot GUI as described above for smelting pure ores. You can then transfer the molten bronze metal to a Ceramic Mold in the same way. If you got the proportions wrong then when you right-click the vessel you'll get the four-slot storage GUI showing the raw ores still sitting in the vessel, unchanged.

Casting

Ceramic tool and weapon molds can be filled directly from the vessel, or from a liquid unshaped ingot.

All the recipes for tool and weapon molds can be found at the Clay Tool Molds page.

Vessel

Place an empty or partially filled Ceramic Tool, Weapon, or Ingot Mold into the slot to fill it with metal from the vessel. It takes 100 units of metal to completely fill an empty Ceramic Mold. The text in the vessel's GUI will be updated to show the amount of metal remaining in the vessel.

Unshaped Ingot

If the copper or bronze has already been turned into an ingot, simply heat it in a forge with an empty ingot mold in the appropriate slot to melt it. While the full, unshaped metal is at liquid temperature, right click with it in your hand to open the casting GUI. You will see an arrow with one slot to its left and two to its right. The leftmost slot will contain the filled mold. Place a single empty tool or weapon mold into the first slot on the right to begin the transfer. Once the transfer is complete the tool mold will move into the output slot and will show itself filled with metal.

Retrieve the filled tool mold and the now-empty Ceramic Mold from the slots on the left. There is a chance that the Ceramic Ingot Mold will be broken and lost during this process.

Once the mold is full, place it into your crafting area and retrieve the finished tool or weapon head from the output. The mold will be destroyed in the process.

Anvils

In order to progress out of the Casting Age, you will first need to work your way up to a Tier 2 Anvil.

Stone

By using a hammer on the top of a raw Igneous stone block that is in its natural spawning layer, you will open the anvil GUI, where you can weld Copper Ingots into Double Ingots.

Igneous Stone
Igneous Intrusive	Diorite	Gabbro	Granite
Igneous Extrusive	Andesite	Basalt	Dacite	Rhyolite

Copper

After you have obtained seven Copper Double Ingots, craft them into a Copper Anvil, where you can weld Bronze Ingots into Double Ingots.

Bronze

After you have obtained seven Bronze Double Ingots or seven Bismuth Bronze Double Ingots, craft them into an Anvil, where you can work Bronze Double Ingots into Sheets and weld Sheets into Double Sheets.

Iron Age

Gathering Ore

By now you should have a Pickaxe and a Prospector's Pick to use for finding and mining ore.

Smelting

Wrought Iron

Wrought Iron is obtained by working an Iron Bloom that has been created in a Bloomery.

Input	Work Type	Output	Notes
Raw Iron Bloom >= 100%	Refine	Refined Iron Bloom	Work on at least a Tier 2 anvil. Raw iron blooms that are less than 100% cannot be refined, and must be thrown back into the bloomery with more ore to create a larger bloom.
Refined Iron Bloom 200%	Split	Refined Iron Bloom 100% x2	Only needed for blooms over 100%. If starting bloom isn't a multiple of 100%, it will split into as many 100% blooms as possible as well as a single bloom with the remaining %. For example: A 360% bloom will split into 3 100% blooms and a single 60% bloom.
Refined Iron Bloom 100%	Hammer	Wrought Iron Ingot
Refined Iron Bloom < 100%	Melt	Unshaped Wrought Iron	Melt refined iron bloom into wrought iron in the forge with a ceramic mold in the side slot, or in a crucible. Melting refined iron blooms under 100% in the forge will give partial unshaped ingots, which can be combined if both are at liquid temperature by using the casting interface, or by using a crucible. WARNING: Melting a refined iron bloom over 100% in the forge will result in only 1 unshaped ingot. Any excess metal will be lost.

Pig Iron

Pig Iron is obtained by smelting the Iron Ore in a Blast Furnace.

Steel

Input	Work Type	Output
Pig Iron Ingot	Hammer	High Carbon Steel Ingot
High Carbon Steel Ingot	Hammer	Steel Ingot
Black Steel starts from the alloy recipe melted in a crucible. It will show as Weak Steel in the crucible.
Weak Steel Ingot Pig Iron Ingot	Weld	High Carbon Black Steel Ingot
High Carbon Black Steel Ingot	Hammer	Black Steel Ingot
Blue/Red Steel start from the alloy recipe melted in a crucible. It will show as Weak Blue/Red Steel in the crucible.
Weak Red Steel Ingot Black Steel Ingot	Weld	High Carbon Red Steel Ingot
High Carbon Blue Steel Ingot	Hammer	Blue Steel Ingot

Smithing

See Anvil page for the guidelines of smithing metal.

Input	Work Type	Output
Ingot	Hammer	Axe Head Chisel Head Hammer Head Hoe Head Javelin Head Knife Blade Pickaxe Head Prospector's Pick Head Saw Blade Shovel Head Scythe Blade
2 Ingots + Flux	Weld	Double Ingot
Double Ingot	Hammer	Mace Head Sword Blade
Double Ingot	Hammer	Sheet
Sheet	Armor Process¹	Helmet Boots
Sheet	Hammer²	Red Steel Bucket Blue Steel Bucket
2 Sheets + Flux	Weld	Double Sheet
Double Sheet	Armor Process¹	Chestplate Greaves
Double Sheet	Hammer	Tuyere

• ¹ Main article: Armor
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