Quick Sand and Gravel Mining

Just a quick video of how to mine sand and gravel quickly. It's an ancient technique, but not everyone knows it. Note that this is harder to do on a server without much lag, harder still in single-player. One somewhat easier way: dig with a torch! (thanks, cotp)

To pick up the torches when you're done, pour out some water - this knocks the torches loose. (thanks, GamerXR72)

Another technique is to simply dig under the sand, put a torch under the single block of bedrock holding up the sand, then knocking the bedrock out and letting the sand collapse.

You can also use this to build tall columns which you can then knock down easily. Place a torch, put a gravel on the torch (aim for its tip), get on top (you'll have to build a block step up) and elevator up (jump, drop gravel, repeat). Once you get back to the bottom of the column, just knock out the bottom block of gravel and the rest will come tumbling down and turn into little blocks.

One downside (if you like flint): gravel falling on a torch will not produce flint. (thanks, PD711)

Filmed on the public survival.discovr.us server.

For all things Vokselia, see http://vokselia.com

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Minecraft
• sand
• mining
• gravel
• Vokselia

[TheScootyPuffer]

it's actually really easy to do on single player. just wait a tiny bit after you break the block to place the torch. 

[ratm239]

nice 

[fenderbend]

Slightly related trick, useful if you are a minecart booster research engineer.

Water washes away tracks (and redstone). So if you have a empty plot where you build your experiments, you sometimes want to reset and start again but it takes a lot of time to reclaim the existing tracks. it's often faster to pull up your (many) tracks by flooding the region for a minute and walking around to pick up the (now loose) tracks.