Doddy

I've been wanting a shovel/axe mount for some time now, but I wasn't about to go out and spend $85 on just the mounts from Yakima so I decided to go down to the Depot and see what I could come up with.

I built my mounts for around $6.00 at Home Depot. If you add in the cost of a $50 small splitting axe and $15 for a short shovel and I came out spending around $80 for everything.

All you need is:
4 2" conduit hangers
4 2-3" 3/8" cariage bolts
A 4 pack of 3/8" wingnuts

There are some down falls of this method the main one being that I couldn't come up with a way to secure it all with a lock. For me this is a non issue since I only wanted to have them up when I was actually going camping/wheeling, mainly because I don't generally find myself in a situation where I need to dig a hole while on the freeway (although I do feel like axin people every now and then). If anyone has any ideas on how to secure these with a lock let me know.

All I did was drill two holes in the shovel handle large enough to fit my cariage bolts through, one at the base and one at the top. Then I just ran the bolts through the mounting brackets, threaded on the wing nuts and attached the mounts to the rack with the supplied hardware.

For the Axe I really didn't want to drill any holes in the axe itself, especially any where need the axe head. My axe came with a case so I drilled a hole trough the case and used the existing hole in the handle. Then just ran the bolts through.

It's cheap, it's easy, it turned out pretty good.

(sorry for the crappy phone pics its all I had).

Shovel mounted:


Axe Mounted:


Backside of conduit mount:


Close up of top of mount: