Welcome to Ember 3, where our tools are “the catalyst for creative flow.” Here at Ember 3, we make small batches of custom quality tools that are both beautiful and precise for the discerning craftsman and artist. All our tools are made in house by us in the U.S.A. We may cut brass, steel, stainless, titanium, wood, damascus, G10, and even do the assembly, finishing, and shipping, but we do send out our blades to a specialist for heat treating. When it comes to our tools, we believe in honoring the past while looking ahead at all the new possibilities.
About the Founder - Michael Zimmerman
My journey as a maker of stuff started very young. My earliest exploits were fueled by my grandpa’s kindling box full of scraps left over from his students’ industrial arts projects. That kindling box full of wonderful hardwoods and softwoods would lead me down the path of many projects like basic boats of a 2nd grader to hand carved and very shapely hull designs of a youth who had learned how to use planes, chisels, and drawknives. My passion to build has been in a constant state of growth and even lead me to consider boatbuilding as a trade at one point. My wife and I travelled from Arizona to the Northwest School of Wooden Boat building in Washington to check out their program. Life happens and I ultimately decided to go back to the University of Arizona to finish my bachelor’s degree in economics. Ironically, the creative itch could not be supplanted by academic rigor, and I found myself still wanting to go to trade school. Realizing that most tradesmen had to settle for either wood or metal as a specialty, I settled for the best compromise available and decided custom gunsmithing with a stock making program. The best program to meet these needs at the time ended up being the gunsmithing program at Yavapai College in Prescott, Arizona. I diligently applied myself to all the program had to offer and was chosen as gunsmithing student of the year and graduated with honors.
Toolmaking has always been a part of life in America. The earliest settlers had little choice but to make much of the everyday items that they used, and they needed tools for this. Some things never seem to change and growing up in a small town led me to the same type of solutions. Some tools I simply did not have and if a bearing needed to be seated or a spring needed compressing, the solution was to make a tool to do it. I grew up around tools in a family that loved tools, but classic woodworking tools have always held a special place for me. It mainly stems from one word, legacy. My first woodworking tools were originally my great grandpa’s and these special planes, saws, chisels, and more still occupy prime space in the toolbox, not just because they work, more importantly, just because they were Great Grandpa’s, Grandpa’s, Dad’s, and now mine – 4 generations having the same tool makes it an heirloom – 4 generations of hands using the same tool makes it a legacy.
Your tools matter and they matter more than most realize. That old Stanley Bedrock isn’t important just for its ability to take fine shavings, it matters because of who used it, the history of the tool, the changes in history and technology that drove it to exist and the changes that tool has been through since its creation. Was it relegated to a shelf when the owner got their first electric planer? Did it take shavings from the woodwork of liberty ships like one of mine likely did according to family legend? To the craftsman and the artist, the tool is literally the catalyst that makes the impossible possible. A society without tools is pretty basic with a life few of us would wish to live or as Thomas Hobbes put it in Leviathan – “and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short (Leviathan, i xiii. 9).” This is how I imagine a society without tools would be described. My philosophy is that tools are leverage that allow all mankind to enjoy a better life from finer instruments, better transportation, and beautiful works of art. I also believe leverage works in a myriad of ways, and we have made some tough decisions for the sake of provision to all. We sacrificed beauty for practicality, uniqueness for efficiency, and soul for industrial quantity. I can only hope to be a small ember that brings to life a creative fire in the craftsman and artist who want their tools as unique as themselves and their creations.
The more practical side of why your tools matter comes from experience. Trade school was an interesting proving ground for this thought. Me being who I am, I wanted great tools when entering trade school, so I purchased a set of blue steel chisels from the Japan woodworker for a hefty amount at the time (if measured purely monetarily). Reality is that they were an absolute joy to use with precise and keen edges and extremely predictable in use. I used these chisels extensively in custom rifle stock making and their beauty and quality had me look forward to using them. Other students were not as fortunate and had poorly made big box store chisels. The chisels were awkward, lacked any soul, and wouldn’t hold a keen edge even if they had only been used to carve a brick of butter, let alone walnut and ebony (obviously an exaggeration about the butter but those chisels were bad, really really bad). They were good at one thing though – they made the young aspiring craftsman get the patently false notion that the problems they were encountering were with them and not the tool. Having seen this pattern repeat with cheap measuring tools, box store hand planes, incorrect screw drivers, and more, I have concluded that your tools really do matter. Your tools must be capable of more than you (the more capable the tool, the better) or you honestly have no clear path to getting better. These lessons and many others have brought me to where I am today. I have a deep love and appreciation for the tools, toolmakers, craftsman, and artists of the past and wish to honor that work with new and fresh approaches to time tested principles of quality tool artistry.