Adam, what I believe I can see at the bottom end of that hilt is a fairly common repair for a cracked hilt, the hilt hole is enlarged, the hilt is compressed to close the cracks, the insert is put in place with a strong adhesive. In the case of your hilt, it appears that the insert has been run through the wooden cup as well.
If a the upper part of a hilt is also badly cracked, or there is a hole through it, usually caused by careless drilling of the tang hole, that insert will be run all the way through the hilt and reshaped into correct form. I suspect something like this could have been done with your hilt.
I note that you are wearing an armour glove. I am aware that some people do wear these when using sharp tools, however, I personally find that I have much better control of power tools & much better feel of traditional manual tools without the glove. Going back to when I was doing a lot of custom knife work there was a bit of a craze for makers to wear these gloves, & at the time it seemed like a good idea, so I gave it a try. I slipped up so many times when using even a single glove that I finally dumped those expensive gloves in the rubbish bin.
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