How to make a Chest in Minecraft & How to Use It

Everyone knows when you play Minecraft the regular inventory space is not enough to hold everything you encounter in a playthrough. A chest makes storing valuable items possible and it is not uncommon to make dozens of chests just to have enough storage space for your items. Making a chest is a quintessential part of any Minecraft playthrough and I will show you how to make one.

– Wood Planks

– Crafting table

Chests are a cheap and incredibly simple recipe with just eight wooden planks per chest. You can use any wood you like to make a chest. You can even mix and match different kinds of wood.

You need the nine-space crafting menu of a crafting table in order to make a chest. To understand how to make a crafting table, click here.

In a Nutshell:

To make a chest, open your crafting table GUI and place eight wooden planks in a circle leaving the middlebox. If you are running short on a specific kind of wood you can use different types of wooden planks to finish out the recipe.

Here is the step-by-step pictorial guide you need to follow to make a Chest in Minecraft:

To make a chest, open your crafting table and place eight wooden planks in a circle around the middle space.

If you are running short on a specific kind of wood you can use different types of wooden planks to finish out the recipe.

A single chest will hold the same amount you can hold in your inventory (minus your toolbar). This means a single chest can hold twenty-seven items.

I always make a preliminary single chest to hold all my items before sorting. When you start the survival world chances are your inventory has become full of saplings, seeds, dirt, and other odds and ends. Getting your inventory clear is almost like a breath of relief.

You can also place two chests side by side to make it into a double chest. This doubles the amount the chest can originally hold.

You can even stack chests on top of each other now. Don’t worry the game understands when it is a chest above it and will now open even if there are multiple chests stacked on top of each other. This makes condensing storage much easier.

To stack chests on top of each other, without opening the one at the bottom, simply hold crouch and right-click to place on top. You can get creative with your chest placement.

You can place double chests in a row like so and have a large amount of storage space in a compact area. Remember, chests will open if a chest is above it but not a solid block.

Chests are also used in various recipes which I will cover below.

If you want a chest on rails you can do so by placing a chest above a minecart in your crafting menu.

You can access this chest while it is still in the minecart so you can build a minecart track from the bottom of your mines to your storage area. This makes it so you can get a bigger haul from your mines. It will still need the power to move so make sure to place some powered rails on your track to get it from the bottom to the top.

A trapped chest is a more devious approach to your storage. Opening the chest will emit a Redstone pulse which can be used to power anything from lights to TNT.

To make a trapped chest, place a tripwire hook and a chest in any of the crafting menu spaces and your trapped chest is ready to go.

Trapped chests will power any adjacent Redstone. This means the trapped chest will need close proximity to any trap you plan to place or be extended with something like a Redstone repeater.

Opening the trapped chest is what activates the Redstone pulse. If it is more than one block away the Redstone wiring will not activate.

To extend the pulse simply place a Redstone repeater next to the chest and the dust will go as far as fifteen blocks. This distance can be refreshed with another Redstone repeater.

Using this you can now power blocks that are much further away than the original pulse the trapped chest emits.

Be careful working with TNT around these. It may punish whoever tries to raid your chests but the chest and the items inside are not safe from the blast.

A. Shulker box is an end-game item that requires defeating the ender dragon and locating an end city. To make a shulker box you will need to hunt down the shulker enemies and get at least two shulker shells. Place the two shells above and below a chest and you will have a portable chest!

A. To make a hopper you will need five iron ingots and a chest. Place the chest in the middle and the iron ingots in a “v” shape around the chest and you will be rewarded with a hopper.

Congratulations! You now have the knowledge to make just about every storing entity in the game. Chests can make inventory management much simpler. Just make sure you remember what you have stored where. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things.