How to Make a Piston in Minecraft: Crafting Recipe & Directions

A piston is a commonly used redstone device in Minecraft. They can be used in a variety of ways, from traps to doors. In this article, we teach you how to craft a piston so you can use it for all kinds of things. We also let you know what blocks can’t be moved with a piston, other ways to get one, and more.

What is the piston recipe in Minecraft?

The crafting recipe for a piston in Minecraft requires 3 wood planks, 4 cobblestones, 1 iron ingot, and 1 redstone dust. In the 3x3 crafting grid, place 3 wood planks horizontally in the top row. Place two sets of cobblestone vertically on the left and right. Place the ingot in the center and the redstone underneath.

Section 1 of 4:

How to Make a Piston

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Before making a piston, you need to make a crafting table so you’re able to access the piston crafting recipe. To make a crafting table, gather four wooden planks of any kind. These can be obtained by breaking a piece of wood and crafting it into planks in your inventory or by taking them from pre-generated structures, like villages.^{[1]
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Gather wood, redstone, iron, and cobblestone. In order to craft a piston in Minecraft, you’ll need to gather wood, redstone, iron, and cobblestone. As you progress in the game, you’ll naturally come across these items. To craft a piston, you need the following number of items:^{[2]
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- 12 cobblestone blocks - Mine grey cobblestone blocks with a wooden pickaxe or higher.
- 1 iron ore - Mine an iron block with a stone pickaxe or higher. Iron blocks orange-speckled blocks typically found amongst cobblestone.
- 2 blocks of wood - Chop two blocks of wood beneath a tree.
- 1 redstone - Mine a block of redstone ore with an iron pickaxe or higher. Redstone is represented by red-speckled blocks most commonly found below ground.
- 1 slime ball (optional) - If you want to create a sticky piston that pushes and pulls blocks, kill a Slime mob to get a slime ball.
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Create wood planks. Press the E key, click your stack of wood blocks, click a box in the "Crafting" section, and then move the stack of planks to your inventory by holding down ⇧ Shift and clicking the stack.^{[3]
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- In Minecraft PE, tap ⋯ in the bottom-right corner of the screen, tap the crafting table icon in the lower-left corner, tap the "Wood Planks" icon, and tap 4 x on the right side of the screen twice.
- On the console edition, press X (Xbox) or square (PlayStation), then press A (Xbox) or X (PlayStation) twice.
Press Esc on a computer, tap X on Minecraft PE, or press the B or circle button on a console to close the crafting menu. Right-click the crafting table (computer), tap the crafting table (PE), or press your controller's left trigger while facing the crafting table (console). The crafting table window will appear.
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Create a furnace and place it on the ground. To make a furnace, gather 8 pieces of cobblestone with a wooden pickaxe. Then, place cobblestone in the top three, bottom three, far-left, and far-right squares in the crafting table's grid, then click the furnace icon to the right of the grid and click your equip bar at the bottom of the screen. Select the furnace in your equip bar, then right-click the ground.^{[4]
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- In Minecraft PE, tap the furnace icon, which resembles a block of stone with a black hole in it, then tap 1 x.
- On the console edition, scroll over to select the crafting table icon, scroll down one, and press A or X.
- In Minecraft PE, tap the space on the ground in which you want to place your furnace.
- On the console edition, face the space on the ground and press the left trigger.
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Open the furnace and smelt an iron ingot. The furnace window has three boxes in it: a top box for ore, a bottom box for fuel, and a far-right box for the final product. Place the iron ore block in the top box and place a wood plank in the bottom box. Wait for the iron ingot to appear in the far-right box, then move it to your inventory.^{[5]
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- In Minecraft PE, tap the iron ore block icon and tap the top "Cook" square in the furnace, then tap the "Fuel" box and tap the wood plank icon. Tap the bar in the "Result" box to transfer it to your inventory.
- On the console edition, select the iron ore block and press Y or triangle, select the wood plank block and press Y or triangle, then once the ore cooks into an iron ingot, select the ingot and press Y or triangle.
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Exit the furnace, open the crafting table and create your piston. Now that you have all the parts you need for a piston, place a wood plank box in each of the squares at the top of the crafting table grid. Then, place the iron ingot in the middle square in the grid, place the redstone in the square below the iron, and fill in the rest of the squares with cobblestone. This will create your piston.^{[6]
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- In Minecraft PE, tap the piston icon, which resembles a cobblestone block with a wooden top, then tap 1 x to create the piston and add it to your inventory.
- On the console edition, press RB or R1 four times, then scroll all the way over to the piston icon on the far-right side and press A or X.
- On the console and PE versions, you can also select a sticky piston, which resembles a piston with green goo on it, if you have a slime ball.
If you gathered a slime ball earlier, you can create a sticky piston by opening the crafting table, placing a slime ball in the center square, and placing the piston below the slime ball. Slime balls are useful for temporarily moving blocks without breaking them. For example, you can make a whack-a-mole game by using sticky pistons to temporarily push blocks up.^{[7]
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Section 2 of 4:

Other Ways to Get a Piston

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Use the “/give” command. Press T on your keyboard or right on your controller’s d-pad to open the text chat. Once you’ve opened the text chat, type “/give @p piston” to give the nearest player a piston. To give all players a piston, replace the “p” with an “a.” To give a random player a piston, replace the “p” with an “r.” Add a number after “piston” to specify the amount of pistons you want to give.^{[8]
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- If you don’t specify the number of pistons, it will default to 1.
In creative mode, press square on PlayStation and X on Xbox to open the creative menu. If you’re on PC, press E to open the creative menu. Then, locate the redstone icon and click on it. It looks like a red triangle. Once you’ve located the icon, scroll down until you see a piston block, then click on it and drag it to your inventory.

Section 3 of 4:

What can pistons not push?

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Pistons are unable to push certain blocks, like bedrock and obsidian. Although pistons are known for pushing blocks, there are certain ones that just don’t budge. Whether it’s the unbreakable bedrock, the strong obsidian, or the smooth flowing water, there are plenty of blocks that pistons cannot push. Those blocks include:^{[9]
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- Barrier
- Beacon
- Bedrock
- Conduit
- Command Block
- Crying Obsidian
- Enchantment Table
- End Gateway
- End Portal
- End Portal Frame
- Ender Chest
- Grindstone
- Jigsaw Block
- Jukebox
- Light
- Lodestone
- Moving Piston
- Nether Portal
- Obsidian
- Extended Piston
- Piston Head
- Reinforced Deepslate
- Respawn Anchor
- Sculk Catalyst
- Sculk Sensor
- Sculk Shrieker
- Spawner
- Structure Block
- Structure Void

Section 4 of 4:

Can you craft a sticky piston with honey?

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No, you can only craft a sticky piston with a slime ball. Although Minecraft mods exist that allow you to do so, you’re currently unable to craft a sticky piston using honey or honey-related items. The only way to craft a sticky piston is by crafting a piston, then placing it alongside a slime ball in the 3x3 crafting grid.^{[10]
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- You need a crafting table in order to craft a sticky piston.

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In which version did Pistons come in Minecraft?

Community Answer

I believe Pistons came out in Minecraft beta 1.7. Before that, there was a mod in which the Piston actually had an iron texture. When they moved a block affected by gravity, like sand, upwards the sand would jump up about 10 blocks and start to fall back down.

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How can I make secret doors with a piston?

Banana Head

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Search online for a design of a door called, "Jeb Door". This design uses about ten sticky pistons to create a completely hidden door.

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How do I get a piston to extend more than one block?

Banana Head

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You can''t make a piston extend more than one block, but you could put two pistons together so when one goes off it pushes the other one block away. Then activate the other one.

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Pistons are not able to push a chain of blocks over 12 blocks.

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You can Build a piston drawbridge or make an automatic piston door using sticky pistons.

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Power a piston by placing a redstone torch or redstone dust next to it.

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Warnings

Attempting to mine iron with a wooden pickaxe—or redstone with a wooden or stone pickaxe—will result in the block breaking without yielding any ore or stones.

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