Bought an M2 Aerometric on the "e-place" and ...

[Niner]

There's a hole on the bottom of the barrel. Right in the center. Should it be there?

[Farmboy]

Yes

[pajaro]

The hole in the bottom of the barrel is an air vent.

[Niner]

The hole in the bottom of the barrel is an air vent.
I thought it might be, though it seemed (to me) large for an air vent. A good bit of internet searching never turned up a photo of the base of the barrel of a pen like mine, so I suspected I'd find my answer here.

The hole on my barrel isn't perfectly round as I'd expect it to be if it was a vent. Obviously someone has reamed it a little. Not terribly, but a little.

I had to keep looking for an image and finally found this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aQy2Nyx3uE at 5:17 into the video. I'll leave it here as documentation. I thought about posting a screen grab, but I'm not sure that would be legit.

[Chrissy]

I had to keep looking for an image and finally found this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aQy2Nyx3uE at 5:17 into the video. I'll leave it here as documentation. I thought about posting a screen grab, but I'm not sure that would be legit.
Yes it would be OK to post a screen grab showing the hole. Alternatively a picture showing the hole in your own pen could be added into your post. :)

[Niner]

See below the apparently undamaged base of the barrel of an Esterbrook M2 Aerometric.

69468

[pajaro]

That isn't how any of my several M2 pens look at the base of the barrel. The plastic barrel extends to the bottom, no metal-looking stuff there. Looking down an M2 barrel with a flashlight, the entire barrel is plastic. no metal in it. I don't know which model of pen you have.

[Niner]

The photos below are of what I'm calling M2 Aerometrics. A couple of web page references lead me to conclude that they're M2s:
http://www.esterbrook.net/deluxe.shtml
http://www.esterbrook.net/101.shtml
The second of those links is useful to me because it identifies the type of aerometric unit used by M2s.

Notice that the caps differ. One has the Esterbrook name down the length of the clip while the other has "ESTERBROOK U.S.A." around the base of the cap.

[pajaro]

I examined two M2s I have. A turquoise colored M2 has a barrel that is plastic all the way to the bottom. This pen has "Esterbrook" on the clip. The second pen is dark blue, and it has metal around the hole at the bottom of the barrel. This pen has "Esterbrook" on the cap around the base. You find differences like this when pens have a long production and they change things up over the years of production. I had not noticed these differences before. Sorry to have misled you.

[Niner]

Sorry to have misled you.




I examined two M2s I have. ... The second pen ... has metal around the hole at the bottom of the barrel.


But I'm not misled, rather I'm newly educated. I didn't know that there were M2s with that feature (metal around the hole). Thanks for the information.