Jacob Grey Firearms

Before Jake Brackett built a firearm meant to sell, he built one to answer a challenge. His father, not long before his death, asked whether the family machine shop could turn out a proper 1911. Brackett took him up on it, and what came out of that shop became less a one-off than a proof of concept: a machinist who had spent his career on aerospace tolerances turning that same discipline toward a handgun.

Brackett grew up around the trade and later served as general manager at a tool-and-die manufacturer whose clients included Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Porsche, and Chevrolet. In 2012 he founded Jacob Grey Precision Machining, an aerospace supplier that went on to earn Gold Star status producing close-tolerance parts for defense and aerospace customers. The firearms side of the business, run under the name Jacob Grey Custom, stayed small on purpose for years: a run of single-stack .45s, twenty to thirty guns a year, built mostly for people who already knew the shop rather than through any advertising.

The company's public profile changed in 2023. That January, at the SHOT Show, Jacob Grey introduced the JG10 Warthog, a line of DPMS LR-308 pattern rifles and pistols built around billet 7075-T6 receivers, its first line outside the 1911 world. The same year brought the TWC 9, the company's first 2011-style double-stack pistol, and its entry into a category that Staccato and a handful of custom houses had already made competitive. Where most of that competition uses polymer grip modules, Jacob Grey machines its frames from solid aluminum billet, a choice the company attributes to its aerospace background rather than styling.

The TWC platform expanded quickly. The TWC Black followed in 2024 with revised grip texture and a redesigned trigger guard, and the Hex arrived in early 2025 with a hexagon-pattern grip module and a ported barrel and slide. GunsAmerica named the Hex its Best Pistol of SHOT Show 2025, the clearest third-party recognition the brand has received to date. A Hex Pro variant, built from dealer and customer feedback, followed later that year.

In October 2025, Jacob Grey introduced the NOX 9, an all-steel, fully machined 2011 with an integrally compensated barrel and a proprietary internal-components process the company calls Armored Billet. The company describes it as more than a decade in development and has priced and positioned it as a direct challenge to established 2011 makers rather than a niche custom offering.

Jacob Grey remains privately held and founder-run, with Brackett as CEO and a small in-house team the company describes as about 15 people, covering machining, assembly, and customer service, without outside contractors. Every firearm carries a lifetime warranty with no registration required, and the company markets its pistols and rifles to competitive shooters, hunters, and law enforcement and military buyers through an individual-officer purchase program. For a collector, the interest is less about pedigree than about process: a machine shop that spent a decade building guns almost nobody outside its own circle knew about, then decided, with the NOX 9, to compete in the open.