When a chest, furnace, or any TileEntity with a "front" is spawned using /summon /setblock or from a spawner, it will always reface itself away from walls (overwriting the “Data” tag). If there are no walls around it, it will ALWAYS face south.
Good chance this has to do with when chests are generated in dungeons, and conflicts with the newer spawning methods.
Click on gif below to see an example.
Example World Download with many possible occurances of this happening (requested by dinnerbone): http://www.mediafire.com/download/8gz7fb26algcef0/SP_World_Spinning_Tiles.zip
This happens with chests, trapped chests, furnances, dispensers, droppers, and anything else with a front face to it.
Edit: In 1.7.2 this also affects the /setblock and /summon commands too!
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@a Hatsu Inu
I was unable to reproduce this workaround. I updated the description on this issue a bit.
MOD PLEASE UPDATE. Still an issue in latest snapshot. Also strangely an issue with /setblock.
Is this still a concern in the current Minecraft version 1.7.2 / Launcher version 1.3.4 ? If so, please update the affected versions in order to best aid Mojang ensuring bugs are still valid in the latest releases/pre-releases.
Yes it absolutely is confirmed in 1.7.2.
Yep, this seems to affect the setblock command in 1.7.2 in the same way. Dispensers always face south, regardless of the data value. But you can change the direction by having a block next to it, so there's that workaround at least.
Confirmed for 1.7.2. Hi last 😃
This ticket has been marked as a duplicate of MC-31365, in favor of the more general or better information provided.
Workaround
The fallingSand entity seems to orientate properly if You let it fall a few blocks down instead of letting it land immediatetly!