Been thinking of lots of ideas to mount a shovel/axe to the stock rails. I have the Rhino Rack steel mesh tray and mounted an axe and shovel to it last year for an extended trip and it worked great. You can see the blade of the shovel below in front of the trash bag on top of the handle.
Then later in the year I took another trip but loaded the tray with some more stuff and lost the space I had the axe and shovel on.
Thought over a lot of ideas, including using clamps that mount lights to roll cages, to u-bolting some sort of block to the roof rails with the quick fists attached, to short strut channel pieces bolted to the rails with the quick fists attached and finally came up with just using strut channel brackets bolted to the rails.
It works pretty well and keeps the shovel reasonably low but not hitting the body or rails. Works for an axe too and I have four brackets so I can do one or both.
Here's the backside.
These bolts are the key.
Thanks to [MENTION=144585]clweathers[/MENTION] and [MENTION=144394]Maadcaap[/MENTION] for the idea and [MENTION=144394]Maadcaap[/MENTION] for the link to the bolts. For some reason they're impossible to find on McMaster Carr's website. The bolt heads fit into the channel on the back of the stock rails and you rotate them 90 deg. and you can tighten them down. I wish maybe the brackets were angled a little towards the center of the roof to get them a little more low profile, but for now I like the solution. I think with these bolts a lot of possibilities open up with regard to mounting stuff to the stock rails.
I can install or remove these brackets really fast and easy, which is great as I don't want them on except for trips, and they are really thick and the whole setup is pretty sturdy.
arty: :reddance: 
