Automatic Sand and Gravel Farm in Minecraft: Easily Build Infinite Resources

A Minecraft world without sand and gravel just wouldn’t work. Both blocks are essential to the game and, thanks to their unique properties, are perfect for your world! Not only are they great blocks for natural structures, but they can also be transformed into a variety of other materials. For the automatic farm, we’ll take advantage of the fact that sand and gravel are affected by gravity and always fall downward. This allows us to exploit a mechanic that enables us to generate infinite blocks! So, let’s take a closer look at gravel and sand and see what you can do with them.

Why Sand and Gravel are Essential for Minecraft

Sand in Minecraft: Properties and Uses

Sand is a natural material that you can find in abundance in your Minecraft world. It is particularly common on beaches and in deserts. There is also red sand, which you can find in the Badlands or the Mesa. Sand is best mined with a shovel, and the desert is probably your best bet to collect a lot of sand. If you invest enough time, you will rarely run out of sand in your world.

And that’s a good thing because sand is needed for a vast array of crafting recipes and other things. It is an incredibly valuable resource for your world.

From sand, you can:

• Make glass. Smelt it in a furnace and use glass to design your base and other buildings. This is probably the most important reason why you need a lot of sand.
• Create sandstone. A great building block for desert structures!
• Craft TNT. Combined with gunpowder, sand becomes an explosive weapon.
• Make dry concrete. Here, sand and gravel come together to create a unique block.

Gravel in Minecraft: Uses and Creative Applications

Gravel may not be as useful as sand, but it is still a great block for decoration. Before the introduction of paths, it was the block to build roads in your Minecraft world! Its texture is unique and can be combined well with other stone blocks. You can find gravel in some overworld biomes, in caves, or even in the Nether.

From gravel, you can:

• Make flint. Mine gravel, and it has a 10% chance to drop as flint. Increase the likelihood with the “Fortune” enchantment.
• Create coarse dirt. A wonderful block for decorations.
• Make dry concrete. Here, sand and gravel come together to create a unique block.

Building Guide: How to Create an Automatic Sand-Gravel Farm

Although sand and gravel are often found in your world, it can take a long time to gather enough resources. Especially if you want to make a lot of glass or concrete, both raw materials are indispensable. However, with an automatic farm, that’s no longer a problem! The design is somewhat complex and requires knowledge of Redstone, but we’ll go through everything step-by-step.

Note: This method relies on duplicating items. If you don’t want to cheat, then this might not be the right choice for you. Unfortunately, there are no other methods to naturally produce sand and gravel. Otherwise, a shovel and the right biome are a manual alternative.

Building Materials for Your Automatic Farm

Duplication Machine:

• Dirt + red mushroom + bone meal
• Building blocks
• 9 Redstone dust
• 3 Redstone repeaters
• 2 Redstone torches
• 6 slime blocks
• 3 leaves
• 5 sticky pistons
• 1 lever

Nether Catch Station:

• Temporary building blocks
• 10 leaves
• 2 hoppers
• 2 carpets
• Chests

Step-by-Step Construction Guide

First, find one of your strongholds, activate it with Ender Eyes, and defeat the Ender Dragon (if you haven’t done so yet). The portal is our starting position for this farm. Remove everything in the room except the portal itself.

With a red mushroom, which we grow one block in front of the end portal, we remove three of the end portal blocks on one side. If you want to repeat this design on all four sides, then you need to remove all sides using the mushroom trick.

We’ll go through the Redstone step-by-step to ensure you set everything up correctly. We are building a kind of small and infinitely running catapult for sand and gravel. These will be sent through the portal to the Nether but will also remain in the overworld.

Place a building block below the edge of the portal. Attach a sticky piston facing forward. Then make a line of 3 Redstone dust. Behind it, dig a 3-block-long hole. Place a repeater at one end and set it to the last stage.

Continue the line in the ground with 3 Redstone dust from the hole. Lay two building blocks over the repeater and the block behind it. Place dust on the first block and another repeater without settings on the second. Attach another building block to the repeater. Attach two Redstone torches on the backside and on top.

The machine is now running, but it’s best to turn it off with a lever on the block with the Redstone torches. Next, place a sticky piston on the upper torch. On the torch and the piston, place two building blocks where we again place dust and a repeater at stage 1. Then build a two-block staircase, and on the first block, place another dust.

Under the uppermost block of this staircase, place the remaining three pistons side by side, facing down. Then we need to place the slime blocks on the two individual pistons, also each in a row of three. Under the pistons opposite the portal, place the three leaves.

Activate the farm by placing your sand or gravel on the slime blocks directly at the portal. Flip the lever, and the farm should work!

In the End, we must now build the catch mechanism. First, find out in which direction the machine throws the sand/gravel by drawing walls at the edge of the obsidian platform. We were lucky since our platform was directly connected to the main island.

On this side, you need to build a small wreath of leaves (to prevent Endermen from spawning). Underneath, place two hoppers and a chest to catch items. On the hoppers, place carpets, also to prevent Endermen.

If you now go back to the machine in the stronghold and activate it, everything should work smoothly! The materials are duplicated through the portal and land in the hopper in the End. Turn off the machine and collect your sand or gravel in the End.

Conclusion

Gravel and sand are essential materials in your world. And with our automatic farm, you can hopefully gather many of these resources without digging them up with a shovel. Build without interruption with infinite sand and gravel on your own server. Rent your Minecraft server and start your building projects without limitations!