Quick Fist clamps for mounting items to the van

Our axe and shovel had been rattling around inside the rear storage compartment for over a year before we worked up the courage to mount them on the wall.

We thought that the Quick Fist clamps we’d bought would easily rip out of the 1/4″ plywood walls but they seem to be holding pretty firmly.

Quick Fist clamps are stretchy rubber straps that are moulded to accept the handles of tools. They also come in larger and smaller sizes to hold tanks, fire extinguishers, even weapons.

We used the “original” size clamps that are designed for 1″ to 2-1/4″ diameter objects.

Axe and shovel mounted under bed rail on inside wall of van using Quick Fist clamps.
Axe and shovel mounted under bed rail on inside wall of van using Quick Fist clamps.

Each clamp has a single screw hole. We screwed the clamps directly on to the 1/4″ thick plywood of our van walls. We were really worried that the clamps would pull the screws straight out, but so far they’ve held just fine.

If they ever do pull through, we’ll replace the screws with a bolt and fender washer combination, but that would require more effort as we’d need to access the back of the wall panels.

The shovel we use is a Bond Mini D-Handle Shovel. It has a fiberglass handle. It’s probably not the best shovel for a zombie apocalypse because the handle is too short to get a really good swing at an undead corpse’s head, but it does great for digging pits and moving dirt around. We had to slide a small piece of pipe insulation foam into the Quick Fist clamp that holds the shovel end, because it was too narrow otherwise.

We also use a Fiskars X15 chopping axe. This has a hollow handle and we’ve used it on a couple of occasions as a breaker bar by sliding it over the end of a wrench. It also functions well as an axe. It’s just about small enough to split kindling one-handed but also hefty enough to split rounds and probably to take out a small tree. Having said that we typically use our Silky BigBoy folding saw (that isn’t its porn name, either!) for trail clearing duties.

We don’t use the tools often enough to really merit them being placed in an easy access position on the wall, but doing so frees up a ton of space in the storage compartment and stops them from rattling around.


We owe a quick shout out to HighSierraBear on the Sprinter forum for posting about mounting his (near identical) shovel and axe. He gave us the impetus to do the same thing rather than continuing to procrastinate about different fixing methods like hollow door anchors, etc.

4 Replies to “Quick Fist clamps for mounting items to the van”

      1. I see. Mostly I wondered whether you needed to worry about going through the plywood and hitting the van metal, but I guess you’ve got at least a 1/4″ gap behind the plywood.

        1. Actually, hitting the van metal might have been better because then you could use a self-tapping metal screw. Most of the area in the rear of the van has a ~2″ gap between where the plywood is and the outside wall of the van. There are only occasional vertical metal pieces behind the interior walls. You can see that best in the pictures in this post on stripping the stock interior.

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