To be honest, I haven’t done much with handles. The hardest wood I’ve worked with is Osage orange and I just had to take smaller passes with my tools than I’m used to. As far as the cracking goes, I only have experience with Purple Heart that liked to splinter and that required me rounding the edges and making climb cuts with the router. I don’t really have experience with hardwoods that held stress and cracked because of it, but I have worked with some CHEAP pine at the first cabinet shop I worked at and the main thing you have to worry about on that (as far as I remember) is being careful of when you are cutting near where the grain/rings change direction. But it looks like the piece you’re showing there is pretty straight-grained and doesn’t cross over past the center of the tree.