When you have a furnace (crafted like a chest only cobblestone not planks), place the iron ore in the top spot (above the grey flame-like image) Then place a fuel into the lower half (e.g, wood, coal, wood sticks, wood planks, coal) and wait until the arrow is completely filled.
Coal is the best fuel you can use because it lasts much longer. The other you can use is sticks I believe? But that should only be used if you have no coal.
The best fuel is a bucket of lava. You won't get the bucket back though. It'll keep the furnace heated for 25 smelts I think. Also, the only practical method of fast travel is boats, because railways require a ramp to gain any real speed, and you can't push yourself along by powered minecart while riding ahead of it, and riding behind it won't do much good. It's very impractical building a large trench just for your cart to gain momentum, however if you build a structure at each end that takes the ramp up alot, you'll be able to go alot faster without a trench. However each time you need to push the minecart back up the ramp.
so i have a ached 22 diamonds and around 200 pieces of steel. what should i do? i also have a million rock. lol
Checked out a few of my old saves, I had some nice accomplishments on some of them. I made a tower of snow with a diameter of 32 blocks that went to max height and a railroad system that went all the way across a 20mb map. Images below. Spoiler My snow tower, made completely without hacks. The start of my railway. A terrible .gif I quickly made just to show an elevator system I designed. And an amazing formation I did absolutely nothing with.
Reach happened. I took it down. I'm sorry, but I don't feel like dedicating my computer to the server anymore. If someone wants to host a server, I'd be glad to hand over the map file.