I've owned the identical knife. It is without a doubt an Ek.
And double edged.
I read in one of my books, that the idea of those strange handles on some of these was to make them float in the event they were dropped in water. I give up as to whether it worked. Perhaps with the shorter, thus lighter blades, it worked. At least long enough for you to snatch it back up in hand.
The one I owned like this was marked but not serial #'d.
All Eks were hand made. By anyone's measure, regardless of time frame.
I get picky when I hear talk sometimes of what is "handmade" and what is "custom" versus machine made.
Take Benchmade knives. They have a full machine shop running 24-7 making every part of one of the many folders they sell. The blades are ground by CAD-CAM. Yet there are still many operations that require a trained craftsperson to complete. I'd still call them machine made knives. Even though a machine can't tighten that pivot screw to operate just so, it takes a human hand.
I can assure you that every blade that the like of Ek, Randall, Nichols et. al. made during WWII were handmade knives. Every operation from profileing, grinding and hafting done by hand using for the most part, a trained eye to make right.
I still make knives like this. How else would I do it? Once you've made a few knives and see that to actually make an efficient cutting edge, not to mention efficent blade geometry to meet the task assigned, there is no other way.
Its here you begin to see the folly of machine ground anything. The one exception being pocket cutlery, which I've found turns out ok with machines doing the grinding.
Back to Ek. His knives were made (forged, the edges at least) from flat simple stock. They are noticably thin comparied to say a Randall #2. His grinds were simple, done in an "apple seed" profile (cross section), that just rolled off the edges of the stock. He did not for instance, do complex grinds like those found on Randall's #'s 1 and 2's. This is one reason, along perhaps with the amount of blades he produced, that they have never seen the values of some of the other WWII hand made knives. Do not take this as a slight. He and his workers were capable of better blades, I think though his aim was to use what he had and help in the war effort. Get them done, make them work, hand'em out.
I mention that he forged his blades. Several years ago, a display (on plywood) appeared on ebay. It was from bought directly from John's decendants or so it said. I would have doubted that except there it was. A board, with all the stages of the making of an Ek knife mounted on it. If I remember, there was a piece of stock, then a profiled blade, then forged edges and bevels etc... I can't imaging in having been faked. The pix were good. Now when I see something like that, I save the damn pix! I did'nt then and have no idea where it went or who owns it. I would imagine it to be a post war item and probably not the only one he made. To continue a knife making business past the war had to be a tough go.
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Very cool blade!
To be honest, I'm kinda suprised he didn't kill it...he destroys everything. This knife was in the right spot at the right time to be saved...I know that if I didn't see it it would have ended up at the scrap yard, trash, or fire pit for sure.
