SABRE knife (blade) with bone handle

Found this one under a house recently with a small pile of discarded flatware, and turns out it might be the kinda fun prize of the bunch...??

Once I rubbed a little rust and some errant glue/caulk residue off (that's all before the pics) it is a 3-3/8" long blade stamped SABRE on one side and CHINA on the other. The blade is mounted using one rivet to hold its short (I guess?) tang into one end of what looks for all the world like a 'rib' bone roughly 3" long, and there are a few turns of copper wire wrapped around where they come together. The rubbery glue-goo was in little spots on the handle and blade but mostly glopped around the wire wraps, once I got that off the blade and wire are both somewhat loose but won't come apart. The bone has a distinct natural (?) texture and compound curved shape (hard to picture, but it curves in 2 directions relative to blade) with what looks like remains of hardened marrow in its middle on the end, but the blade is straight and has probably been 'cut into' its end of the bone.

I suspect this is somebody's homemade way to re-handle an orphaned knife blade, but don't know that...there's just a little bit of something about it that *also* makes me wonder if it was really intended to be that way, in an intentionally "primitive" look/feel...??