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

A Minecraft world without sand and gravel just wouldn’t function. Both blocks are essential to the game and, thanks to their unique properties, perfectly suited for your world! Not only are they great blocks for natural structures, but they can also be turned into a variety of other materials. For the automatic farm, we take advantage of the fact that sand and gravel are affected by gravity and always fall downwards. This allows us to exploit a mechanism to generate infinite blocks! So, let’s take a closer look at gravel and sand and show you 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 you can find in abundance in your Minecraft world. It is particularly common on beaches and in deserts. There’s also red sand, which you can find in the Badlands or Mesa. Sand is best mined with a shovel, and the desert is probably your best bet for collecting a lot of sand. If you invest enough time, you’ll rarely run out of sand in your world.

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

You can make the following from sand:

• 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.
• Sandstone. A great building block for desert structures!
• TNT. Together with gunpowder, sand becomes an explosive weapon.
• Dry concrete. Here, sand and gravel come together to create a unique block.

Gravel in Minecraft: Uses and Creative Possibilities

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 used to create paths in your Minecraft world! Its texture is unique and blends well with other stone blocks. You can find gravel in some overworld biomes, caves, or even in the Nether.

You can make the following from gravel:

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

Construction Guide: How to Build an Automatic Sand-Gravel Farm

While sand and gravel are often available in your world, it can take a long time to collect enough resources. Especially if you want to make a lot of glass or concrete, both raw materials are indispensable. However, with an automatic farm, this is no longer a problem! The design is a bit more complicated and requires knowledge of Redstone, but we’ll walk you through it step by step.

Note: This method is based 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. A shovel and the right biome are otherwise 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 Collection 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 already). The portal is our starting point for this farm. Clear everything in the room except for 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, you’ll need to remove all sides using the mushroom trick.

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

Place a building block at the bottom edge of the portal. Place a sticky piston facing forward on it. Then lay 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. Place two building blocks over the repeater and the block behind it. On the first block, place dust, and on the second, another repeater without settings. Attach another building block to the repeater. Attach the two Redstone torches to the back and top.

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

Under the top block of this staircase, place the last three pistons side by side, facing downwards. Then we need to place the slime blocks on the two individual pistons, each in a 3-row. Under the pistons opposite the portal, place the three leaves.

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

In the End, we now need to build the collection mechanism. First, find out which direction the machine throws the sand/gravel by placing walls at the edge of the obsidian platform. We were lucky as our platform was directly on the main island.

On this side, you need to build a small wreath of leaves (so no Endermen spawn). Below, place two hoppers and a chest to collect. On the hoppers, place carpets, also to prevent Endermen.

If you now return 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 then 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 collect many of these resources without digging them out with a shovel. Build uninterrupted with infinite sand and gravel on your own server. Rent your Minecraft server and start your construction projects without limitations!