And, no, I'm not talking about navel piercings. (or naval, for that matter) I'm speaking of the piercing of a steel pen at the base of the slit separating the tines. This has been called many things, many of them silly or misleading ("gravity well"? "breather hole"?) Lately I had taken to calling it just the "hole" but I've begun to change my mind and instead I'm going to begin to call it the "central piercing."
First off, it is a piercing of the surface of the pen, as much so as any side piercings. it is also centrally located as it stops the slit, which is (almost) always on-center. (Only the multi-line pens violate this truism). And, by calling it a piercing, we also acknowledge the fact that these gaps often have a decorative role in addition to any functional ones.
I recently purchased my first lightboard, and since then I have actually spent more time photographing steel pens in my collection that have interesting central piercings, then I have using it for writing practice.
At first, I took a picture of some pens from a recent mass purchase. (one of those fabled "bag o' pens" where you don't know what you're getting, but you do know you're getting a lot of it) This is the first picture below.
These pens have a nice mixture of standard shapes, as well as unusual ones.Some piercing shapes are associated with specific pen shapes or types. The first image (Esterbrook 914) with the torch-shaped piercing is almost always found on Bank Pens, long beak-shaped pens. The second inverted chevron (or "inverted V") is often found on stub pens, most of which are of one shape, but this one (Hunt 709 Courier Stub) has a different silhouette. Then there are the unusual ones. You have the Hunt 1681 Pennsylvania with it's upside-down keystone shape. Pennsylvania is known as The Keystone State, so this is an unusual example of the piercing shape related to the name of the pen. The other fun one is a Spencerian 41 Panama Pen. The ax-shaped piercing is one of my favorites. Not sure what an Ax has to do with Panama, unless it's indirectly referencing the amount of trees they had to cut down to build the canal through the jungle. That theory falls apart, though, when you consider the pen is actually made by Perry and was sold outside the US as the Perry 92EF Glastone. What an ax has to do with the prime minister, perhaps someone more, shall we say, British can answer.
If these are of interest, let me know and I can post more. Not all are quite as quirky as the ax, but there are a fair number that aren't simple ovals.
Andrew