SSK Industries, Inc. is an American designer and manufacturer of

guns A gun is a ranged weapon designed to use a shooting tube (gun barrel) to launch projectiles. The projectiles are typically solid, but can also be pressurized liquid (e.g. in water guns/cannons, spray guns for painting or pressure washing, pr ...

and accessories in

Wintersville, Ohio Wintersville is a village in central Jefferson County, Ohio. The population was 3,609 as of the 2020 Census. It is part of the Weirton–Steubenville metropolitan area. The village is suburban in nature and is governed by a mayor and council el ...

. Founded in 1977, the company is known for its custom Contender and Encore barrels. Started by hunter and gun enthusiast J. D. Jones, SSK Industries began by manufacturing and marketing specific products related to hunting handguns and ammunition. It has grown to a company that makes hundreds of different types of rounds.

Lehigh Defense Lehigh Defense is a US bullet manufacturer, known primarily (in the civilian market) for its line of solid copper bullets, located in Clarksville, Texas Clarksville is a city and county seat of Red River County, Texas, in the United States in ...

acquired SSK Industries in 2019, and has re-branded i
SSK Firearms

Notable products

SSK produced the largest center-fire

rifle A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting, with a barrel that has a helical pattern of grooves ( rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with ...

in history, the

.950 JDJ The .950 JDJ (24.1×70mm) is a powerful large caliber rifle cartridge developed by American gunsmith and weapon designer J. D. Jones of SSK Industries. Cartridge .950 JDJ cases are approximately 70 mm in length, and are based on a 20×11 ...

. It is a .950 caliber which produces recoil equivalent to shooting ten .30-06 rifles at the same time. SSK manufactured three of these rifles, and no longer produces the ammunition. The Whisper family of firearm cartridges were developed in the early 1990s as a line of accurate, multi-purpose cartridges using relatively heavy

bullets A bullet is a kinetic projectile, a component of firearm ammunition that is shot from a gun barrel. Bullets are made of a variety of materials, such as copper, lead, steel, polymer, rubber and even wax. Bullets are made in various shapes and con ...

for a given caliber in subsonic loads. The intention was to create an extremely accurate cartridge family for military, police, competition and specialized hunting markets that could also be easily sound- suppressed. While initially a group of

wildcat cartridge A wildcat cartridge, often shortened to wildcat, is a custom cartridge for which ammunition and/or firearms are not mass-produced. These cartridges are often created in order to optimize a certain performance characteristic (such as the power, s ...

s, many of them now have

SAAMI The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute (SAAMI, pronounced "Sammy") is an association of American manufacturers of firearms, ammunition, and components. SAAMI is an accredited standards developer that publishes several Americ ...

and C.I.P. specifications.

References

Ammunition designers Firearm manufacturers of the United States {{US-manufacturing-company-stub