I happen to have a few, left to me by my old friends Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone. In service to all mankind, or at least the part of mankind that still fiddles with tents and tarps, here is a picture of a visclamp.
Alas, there appear to be none available anymore, at any price. If you have any, NEVER lend them out. You'll NEVER get them back. EVER. They sprout legs and crawl off in ways that would challenge the creativity of a small army of Hollywood script writers.
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| Proof-of-life photo of a pair of visclamps who floundered en'route to the Ark |
The ball is pushed up through the fabric and the large hole, and then the clamp is slid along its rails until the ball is over the small hole, whereupon the guy line is routed through the large hole and wala, instant movable grommet. Think "super-duty garter belt fastener". (they're still making those)
They're absolutely bomb-proof fasteners, and will hang on to fabric or random places on tents with crazy tenacity. There are some plastic do-dads that attempt to do the same job, and if you're lucky enough to always be latching onto ripstop nylon, or some other crazy tough fabric, they'll do. But in high winds and thin sheets, these babies are the only option.
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Colin Fletcher (wrote The Complete Walker, published in three editions in 60's and 70's or so) recommended these, but also the low-tech counterpart, which is to find a round pebble about the size of those balls, and push it up into the tarp the same way, and then take your rope and tie it in place of the garter clip so as to strangle the gathered tarp around the underside of the ball.
Since the easiest way to get the rope secure is to cinch it up completely tight (tighter than the wire loop of the clip), the rock and rope approach does pucker the tarp a little bit more, but as long as you know your knots it's no less secure.
Colin Fletcher, whose book “The Complete Walker” was where I learned of these, also described a homegrown version, which was to take a round pebble about an inch in diameter, ball that up in the tarp, and tie a piece of paracord around the gathered neck of the tarp just below the rock. It puckers the tarp a bit more than the Visklamp, but it holds just as well — at least if you use a serviceable knot. My favorite knot is Clifford Ashley’s “constrictor knot,” with both ends then tied in a loop, into which you fasten your guy rope with a sheet bend, with ITS two sides then joined in a bowline. Has never ever failed me. I have a four-thickness folded-up tarp installed as the bed cover on my pickup truck, with the rear corners secured that way, and they’ve held for hundreds of miles at 70 mph for nearly three years.
Another excellent product, also a lot like a jumbo garter clip, is the Byers Super Snap (https://www.creativesalescompany.com/byers--home.html), made of a yellow tough-flexible-polymer noose (polyurethane?) and a yellow rigid-plastic disc to fit within it. I’ve had very good luck with these as well. BEWARE, though, that there are knockoff versions that look quite similar but are made of stiffer cheaper material and are much harder to use. (And then for a while there were also some kind-of-similar-shaped ones on the market that actually didn’t work with the same garter-clip principle at all, and were totally worthless.) So study the Byers web site package photo, and make sure what you buy has all the details of that, USA flag and all. Also it may be possible that even the genuine ones can be pulled loose if used on overly thick tarps in really high winds. I can’t be sure, since the instance of that which I suffered was with some that I later realized were knock-offs. Byers itself, though, actually does offer a second version for heavy-duty use.
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