An Armor Stand in Minecraft can be used to display wearable items such as Armor, Heads, Pumpkins, and even an Elytra. However, crafting the Armor Stand isn't as straightforward as it might look. The crafting recipe involves a few steps, as it requires some key items that need to be made from a furnace.

While an Armor Stand might seem like a decoration item, it is also quite useful. If you have different sets of Armor with different enchantments, you can use these Stands in your base to display them when you're not wearing them and swap them for ease of access. This also applies to other items such as Minecraft's Elytra Wings or a carved Pumpkin.

Armor Stand Recipe

Crafting Recipe & Required Items

It's possible to find armor stands naturally in Minecraft in the outdoor armories of every taiga village. But to craft your own, you will need to collect some key items. The recipe for a Minecraft armor stand is:

• Six sticks
• One smooth stone slab

The sticks are fairly easy to acquire. Not only are they easy to craft, requiring any wooden plank or bamboo, but they can also be found as rewards from a number of mobs, from fishing, and from destroying leaves and dead bushes. A stone slab requires a bit more work, as you'll need a furnace to make one. Besides crafting, smooth stone slabs can also be found in a few naturally occurring locations like strongholds trail ruins, mansions, and more.

How To Craft Smooth Stone Slabs

There are a few steps to getting Smooth Stone Slab in Minecraft. You should already have a Furnace (made by using any eight types of stones) and three Cobblestones. You can get Cobblestone by mining stone on the surface, which can be acquired using a wooden pickaxe.

Once you have three Cobblestones, you need to place them in the Furnace to craft Smooth Stones in Minecraft. After the Smooth Stones are prepared, place them in the middle row of the crafting table to make a smooth stone slab.

How To Craft Sticks

Sticks are fairly easy to obtain in Minecraft, as you only need two wood planks. The two wood planks can be from any tree and can be acquired by using an axe or your character's bare hands.

There are other ways you can get Sticks, such as loot from chests, Dead Bushes, Witches, and Boats with Chests.

Once you have acquired two pieces of any kind of wood, crafting the stick is simple. Just place them on top of each other in the crafting table grid to produce sticks. Two plants of wood result in four sticks, so you'll need to repeat this process twice to get enough sticks for your armor stand.

How To Craft An Armor Stand

Armor Stand Crafting Recipe

Crafting an Armor Stand in Minecraft will require following an exact pattern using the items mentioned earlier. For a visual representation, you can have a look at the pattern in the image above, or refer to the table below:

In the crafting table's menu, place three sticks in the first row and one stick in the middle of the second row. Finally, in the third row, you need to place one stick in the first box, a smooth stone slab in the middle, and another stick in the third box.

How To Use Armor Stands

Best Way To Use Stands

Armor Stands can be used for valuable items like Armor, Mob Heads, Elytra Wings, and other wearable items. To use an Armor Stand, you will need to interact with it just like how you would interact with a Sign or a Banner. To store your Armor, hold the item you want to store, point at the stand, and press the "use" key.

If you want to be creative, you can use Pistons to push your Armor Stands, flow with moving water, pull by Fishing Rods, or bounce on Slime Blocks. This is because Armor Stands obey gravity in Minecraft, which can result in quite creative ways to summon your items in your base.

If you're playing on PC, you can even use the "/summon" command to have your Armor on the stand with different poses, make them invisible or even have them with arms. You can also equip weapons using the command. Below are the commands you can use to play with Armor Stands:

• Show Arms: /data merge entity @e[type=armor_stand, ] {ShowArms: }
• Make Stand Invisible: /summon minecraft:armor_stand ~ ~ ~ {Invisible:1b}
• Make Armor Stand: /summon minecraft:armor_stand ~ ~ ~ {Marker:1b}
• NoBasePlate Stand: /summon minecraft:armor_stand ~ ~ ~ {NoBasePlate:1b}
• Small Armor Stand: /summon minecraft:armor_stand ~ ~ ~ {Small:1b}
• Disable Slots: /summon minecraft:armor_stand ~ ~ ~ {DisabledSlots:0}

Crafting an Armor Stand ultimately doesn't require much in the way of materials or complexity, but it opens up a lot of opportunities. With the various ways one can interact with Armor Stands, you can create some very creative poses with your Armor and express yourselves in Minecraft in a unique and interesting way.