Smooth Sandstone — Minecraft block

Overview

Smooth Sandstone is one of the 5 variants of this shape in the game. What changes between them is the material, and with it the hardness, the drops, the durability and the recipe — so every figure on this page is this variant's own. Sandstone is the same shape in a different material.

Smooth Sandstone is a building block in Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.4. Hardness 2 puts it in the middle of the pack for mining speed. Mine it with a wooden pickaxe or better, or you get no drop at all.

Broken correctly, it drops itself. Sixty-four fit in one inventory slot. Put Sandstone in a furnace and this is what comes out.

It is used to craft Smooth Sandstone Slab and Smooth Sandstone Stairs.

About the sandstone set

How long it takes to break

Smooth Sandstone sits at hardness 2: 10 seconds per block with your fists, 0.35 with the correct netherite tool.

You are looking at 0.5 seconds on iron and 0.4 on diamond — the iron step is where the time actually falls.

The block still breaks with a weaker tool, but below wooden it yields nothing at all — the time is spent and the drop is lost, which is the single most common way players waste a vein.

The Efficiency formula is level² + 1 added to tool speed — at V that is about 3.5 times the unenchanted rate.

* breaks the block but yields no drop
Tool	No enchantment	Efficiency III	Efficiency V
Hand *	10 s	10 s	10 s
Wooden	1.5 s	0.25 s	0.15 s
Stone	0.75 s	0.25 s	0.1 s
Iron	0.5 s	0.2 s	0.1 s
Diamond	0.4 s	0.2 s	0.1 s
Netherite	0.35 s	0.2 s	0.1 s
Golden	0.25 s	0.15 s	0.1 s

Properties

Smooth Sandstone resists blasts at 6, which usually is not enough when something explodes nearby. Light does not pass through it, and it emits none of its own. One inventory slot holds 64, the normal full stack. The fastest tool for it is a pickaxe; any other kind of tool mines it no faster than a bare hand does, because the speed bonus only applies to the tool class the block is tagged for.

Transparent: No
Required tool: Wooden Pickaxe