A few weeks ago I received an email requesting I review a CLP (Clean, Lubricate, and Protect) product for guns:

Hey there,

This is John with Professor Pew, a small Detroit-based gun care products company (affiliated with BravoBelt). Your blog caught my attention and we’d like to learn more about your brand collaborations.

Our website: www.professorpew.com

What’s your process for getting on your product review schedule? Happy to send you a bottle of our CLP (on the house) to test the waters. Just need a good address.

Let me know if you’re interested.
  
John
Brand Partnerships & Development
www.professorpew.com

I looked at their website and was skeptical for multiple reasons:

Welcome to Professor Pew, a plant-based gun cleaning, lubricant, and protectant company.

I haven’t used a CLP product in decades. My reasoning being that any product which is multipurpose must be a tradeoff and have inferior performance to a corresponding set of single purpose products. There can be advantages related to lower cost, size, etc. but function performance has to take a hit in a multiple function product.

When I read about the “plant-based” aspects of the product I rolled my eyes. They added another constraint and corresponding tradeoff.

But I agreed to review their product and they sent me an eight ounce bottle:

I cleaned two dirty guns with the CLP. I was shocked at how easy it was to get them clean. The most amazing part was the cleaning of the barrels. Usually there is carbon in the edges of the grooves of my pistols. I either leave it or use some bore past, a patch, and bronze brush to get most of it out. With this CLP I left it in the barrel for five of the recommended (as found on the back of the bottle) 2-5 minutes. I scrubbed it a few strokes with a bronze brush it and pushed a clean patch through the barrel. The barrel was clean! No line of black in the edges of the grooves.

There were other areas of the guns, corners in particular, that never get very clean which were now cleaner than they have ever been since the guns were new. This is an awesome cleaner! And there was no strong obnoxious smell.

But how about lubrication? The test which some lubricants fail is an extreme cold test. I lubricated one gun and wiped off the excess oil. I then put it in a zip lock bag and put it in the deep freeze overnight. The next morning I pull the gun out of the freezer, removed it from the zip lock bag, racked the slide, and exercised the hammer and trigger multipole times. Everything worked as expected. I have seen the slide on guns take two seconds or more to creep forward until they contacted the round which failed to chamber. The hammer would fall so slowly they would only make the slightest of dent in the primer. The lubrication had turned into a high viscosity grease at the cold temperature. With this CLP, I could not detect any velocity reduction.

I don’t have a quick and easy way to test the protective qualities, but I did have one more test.

I took a freshly lubed gun and put it in my brass dryer. I let it dry for about an hour to see the results. My usual lubricant will be essentially dry to the touch. Professor Pew CLP did not dry out to a film. It was still slightly moist.

For demanding dusty and/or sandy environments I probably will still use the Interflon Fin Super but Professor Pew CLP will get the nod in other situations.

You can get Professor Pew CLP direct from their website or from Amazon.