Blasting Raw Metal Blocks – Smelt Entire Stacks in Seconds
After a long mining trip, you return to your base with dozens of stacks of raw iron, raw copper, and raw gold. The standard approach is to throw nine pieces into a furnace and wait. Even with a blast furnace, processing hundreds of raw ores one by one feels like an eternity. That is where the Blasting Raw Metal Blocks mod changes everything. It introduces a simple but powerful mechanic: you can now smelt an entire block of raw metal directly into its corresponding metal block, using a blast furnace. The result is a massive time-saving feature that feels like it should have been part of vanilla Minecraft from the start.
How the Mod Transforms Your Smelting Workflow
In vanilla, crafting nine raw iron into a block of raw iron is purely a storage trick. You cannot smelt that block into an iron block. This mod adds exactly that recipe, along with the logic to handle experience points and cooking times. When you place a block of raw metal into a blast furnace, it smelts down into one block of that metal—just as if you had smelted all nine raw pieces individually and then crafted them together. The key difference is that you only need one smelting operation instead of nine. For large quantities, this can reduce your waiting time from several minutes to mere seconds.
The mod is fully configurable, so you can fine-tune every aspect to match your playstyle. If you want the process to be even faster, you can adjust the cooking time. You can also decide whether normal furnaces should be able to handle raw blocks, with a penalty of double the cooking time compared to a blast furnace. This flexibility makes the mod suitable for both fast-paced technical servers and more relaxed survival worlds.
Configuration Options You Can Tweak
All settings are stored in a simple JSON file located at config/blastingraw.json inside your Minecraft profile folder. You can also edit these values directly in-game if you have a mod like Mod Menu installed. Keep in mind that any change requires a full restart of Minecraft to take effect. Here is what you can customize:
- cooking_time – The number of ticks it takes for a blast furnace to smelt one raw block into a metal block. The default is balanced but can be lowered for near-instant results.
- raw_metal_list – A list of raw blocks, their smelted block counterpart, and the experience reward. By default it covers raw iron, raw copper, and raw gold, but you can add modded metals or remove vanilla ones.
- works_in_furnace – When set to true, regular furnaces also accept raw block smelting recipes, but the cooking time is automatically doubled. This gives you a slower alternative when you lack blast furnaces early in the game.
If you enjoy experimenting with custom modpacks, this level of control is a dream. You can integrate raw blocks from other mods—like raw tin, raw silver, or raw lead—by simply adding entries to the list. The mod does not lock you into a fixed set of metals, so it scales beautifully with heavily modded worlds.
Compatibility Across Loaders and Versions
Blasting Raw Metal Blocks is built for modern Minecraft and supports Fabric, Forge, and NeoForge. This triple-loader support means you can drop it into almost any modpack without worrying about conflicts. The mod is lightweight, only adding the necessary smelting recipes and a small configuration handler. It does not introduce new blocks, items, or world generation, so performance impact is negligible.
Whether you are running a vanilla-plus Fabric setup or a massive Forge modpack with hundreds of mods, this utility fits right in. It is especially useful in packs that increase ore generation or add many new raw metals, because the time saved multiplies with the number of ores you collect.
Getting Started with Blasting Raw Metal Blocks
Installing the mod is straightforward. Download the correct version for your mod loader from platforms like CurseForge or Modrinth, then place the JAR file into your mods folder. If you prefer a more streamlined approach, using a dedicated launcher can simplify the entire process. For instance, the foxygame.net launcher offers a convenient, flexible, and modern Minecraft launcher where you can browse and install mods like this one directly from the in-app menu, eliminating the need to manually move files around. This makes it especially appealing for players who switch between different modpacks frequently or want to keep their installations tidy.
Once the mod is loaded, simply craft your raw ores into blocks as usual, then toss them into a blast furnace. You will immediately notice the difference when your first stack of raw iron transforms into eleven iron blocks in under a minute. The mod also respects the standard blast furnace speed bonus, so the experience feels completely natural.
Why This Mod Belongs in Your World
Vanilla Minecraft’s smelting system is intentionally slow to encourage automation and patience. However, when you are dealing with fortune-enchanted pickaxes and large-scale mining, the bottleneck shifts from gathering ores to processing them. Blasting Raw Metal Blocks removes that bottleneck elegantly, without breaking the game’s balance. You still need to invest in blast furnaces and fuel, and the experience gain remains tied to the number of raw ores you originally mined.
Server administrators will appreciate the configurable nature of the mod. You can set cooking times high to keep the challenge, or enable furnace smelting for players who have not yet reached the Nether. The JSON configuration is human-readable, so even a quick server-side tweak requires no coding knowledge.
Final Thoughts
Blasting Raw Metal Blocks is one of those quality-of-life mods that you never knew you needed until you try it. It respects the vanilla progression while fixing a tedious part of the gameplay loop. With full Fabric, Forge, and NeoForge support, deep configuration options, and zero performance overhead, it earns a permanent spot in any survival-oriented modpack. The next time you return from a caving session with a full inventory of raw metals, you will wonder how you ever tolerated the old way of smelting.