How to Use Ore Hammers and Crushed Ore Processing

What Ore Hammers Do

All The Ores includes ore hammers for at least bronze and copper. An ore hammer is a hand tool that crushes ore blocks or ingots into dusts. This is useful before you have a proper macerator or pulverizer, and it lets you double your metal output by smelting dusts instead of raw ore.

Crushing Ore into Dust

Hold the ore hammer and use it on an ore block or place the ore in a crafting grid with the hammer. The result is usually two dusts per ore, which smelt into two ingots instead of one. This effectively doubles your yield from every vein you mine. Hammers have durability, so craft a spare or repair it when it wears down.

Dust Uses Beyond Smelting

Dusts are not just for smelting. Many tech mods accept dusts directly in alloy mixing, so you can combine copper dust and tin dust to make bronze dust without ever smelting the base metals first. Dusts are also used in some chemical or centrifuge recipes. Keep a chest of assorted dusts on hand — you will reach for them whenever a machine recipe calls for a powdered input rather than an ingot.