You mention that the prop department would want to save time so the cast the V3 in aluminum then put it in a lathe, but that doesn’t really jive to me to be a time saver, it would likely be as much or more work than just turning one from a piece of aluminum stock. Especially if there is any warping that would cause a ton of problems when trying to turn it in a lathe (oblong rather than a round shape being the main one).
The pommel being crooked can’t be from being mounted in the lathe off centre, at less not if the whole saber was cast as one piece as implied by the wood master. That angle would have had the main body of he saber at and angle that it would be whipping around like Thor’s hammer! Dangerous to say the least! More likely the pommel is an individual piece that perhaps was hollowed out and is just jammed on crooked.
That’s my take on it.
The V2 and the V3 are metal castings that were produced from a mold taken off a wooden master during the production of ANH. There were even a few more metal castings produced from that mold, referred to as "blanks" or "spares". I think those castings were just sanded more or less by spinning them in a lathe. The "pommel" on the wooden master seen in the first post on that thread looks notably different compared to the pommel "section" on the metal blank. I still have no explanation for this.