A Couple Funky Saws

This post is as much a request for information as it is to document these two saws.  If anybody knows something about these saws, please comment.

These were part of an auction lot that I bought at my local tool collector's organization, PAST Tool Collectors.  Sometimes when an auction has multiple items in a "lot", you get some oddballs with the stuff that you really bought the lot for.  In these next two photos, ignore the middle saw - I posted about that one separately.

Top: a little skewback;   bottom: an odd two-sided saw

The other side.  Notice anything odd?

The little skewback has no indication of maker.  Based on its size and the small handle (even too small for my narrow hand), it was probably made for kids.  It has a 15 1/2" tooth line, 8 tpi / 9 ppi, filed rip, and the plate is about 0.030" thick.  But look at the bolt configuration.

Only one wingnut shows on this side (Wait. What? A wingnut!!??)

In the first picture above, you'll notice two saw bolts on the left side.  One of them doesn't go through!  Instead, there is a hole in the plate for the through bolt, and a slot for the second "bolt".

OK, that's weird!

The second saw bolt is just a pin with a slotted head

Is that funky or what!?  Why would that be.  It's probably just a cheap saw, but it doesn't seem like it would save any production costs to use a slot instead of a hole.

One last thing.  Look at the tooth line in that last pic.  These teeth are filed rip, but the rake is typical of a crosscut saw at about 15°!  The teeth are almost perfectly spaced at 1/8", so this saw was probably hardly used and never sharpened.  The plate is still straight as an arrow, so I'll sharpen it (with 0° rake), reshape the handle and see if it cuts worth a darn.

Update: I've now sharpened the saw and it cuts fine.  I left the relaxed rake for the first 1-2" and the rest is filed with 0° rake.  Also, when cleaning up the plate, I found this.

After VERY light sanding I found a little bit of an etch.
"GREAT S...."  (GREAT STATES?, GREAT SAVES?) Just can't tell.

Is that some part of the etch at lower left of "GREAT"

Here it is cleaned up, sharpened and handle scraped, sanded, reshaped and oiled

And I sunk a hex nut and dumped that ridiculous wingnut

The second saw is just plain wacky.  Maybe some of you have come across similar saws or know something about this type of saw.

That's one funky saw!

This saw has no maker's mark that I can find.  The beefy, 0.048" thick plate has about 19" of tooth line and there are teeth on both edges of the plate.  The symmetric handle is "hung" so that the "hang angle" is the same no matter which way you hold the saw.  One side is filed crosscut (top in this pic), approx. 7 tpi.  The other side has teeth filed for something else - maybe pruning.

The two types of teeth

Approx. 3 pairs of teeth per inch, 6 tpi

Sometimes crosscut saws are filed poorly and the result is what they call "cows and calves" - every other gullet shallow, the others deeper.  But I'm certain these teeth were shaped this way on purpose.  What exactly that purpose was is my question.

The handle has a split that goes from the middle of the grip almost to the front-most saw bolt.

See the crack?  No doubt that's what the black tape residue was for.

The teeth are very brittle - some have broken off and I broke another just messing around with it.  I won't turn this into a user - don't even know what it's for.  But the blade might be useful as a cutter in a tapered reamer.  And the saw bolts are nice brass bolts in very good condition.  That'll come in handy.

Saw bolts in good shape

So that's it.  If anybody has any information they could share about either of these saws, I would be grateful.

Update: I spied a saw just like the double-sided saw above in an old Atkins catalog.  It's a pruning saw.  I can see the larger teeth being used for that.  But why it has the smaller crosscut teeth on the other side is still a mystery to me.