Questions for a professional door opener

“Never open the door,” goes the song by EAV, but what if the person outside still wants to come in or has to? Then a breacher is needed, who opens the door with specialized tools.  SKOGAMOR from Germany manufactures breaching tools and knows what he is producing, as he has worked as a breacher himself. We invited him for an interview:

SPARTANAT: Which door is to blame for you having to manufacture your own breacher tool?

SKOGAMOR: It wasn’t even a specific door that triggered it. During my service, it often happened that you had two tools that were both not necessarily bad, but I would have liked to combine the advantages of both in one tool. An example of this was a crowbar. The telescopic pole from one was great, but the lever area was quite useless. The other crowbar had an excellent lever area, but no telescopic pole. That was one of the moments I thought about making access tools myself. But it would take a long time before these ideas turned into action.

SPARTANAT: Is there a tool that opens all doors, or how many tools does a breacher need?

SKOGAMOR: Unfortunately, this cannot be answered so generally, as each tool has its own scenarios for its application. Additionally, depending on whether I am operating in a police or military context, it can be said that with a LUKAS battery-operated spreader and a breaching shotgun, one can get quite far. Unfortunately, I cannot go into detail here.

SPARTANAT: Asked behind closed doors: What makes your tools better than those of your competitors?

SKOGAMOR: It's not so much that we always do something better; a ram always remains a ram. Our point is that we often take a different path and pursue a certain goal through innovations for the user. Our tools should be easy to use and, if possible, always function, ideally forever. Because in ongoing operational situations, a tool that fails can cause serious problems and pose dangers for the forces at the door.

Another very important difference that sets us apart from others is that we can customize the tool to the customer; no one has to buy something off the shelf from us. We can regularly offer this service without or with a small surcharge. Let’s recall the example of the crowbar from above; it was very important to me that we want to build the best possible tool for the user to fulfill their task as effectively as possible.

SPARTANAT: By the way, you have a special name; what do you want to tell us with SKOGAMOR?

SKOGAMOR: We need to jump back up for that; over time, I had many ideas, but the determination wasn’t always there, or the right time hadn't come to implement all of them.

Then came a time a few years ago when life became difficult if you had certain views or made decisions for yourself. This led to my active time ending, and my wife encouraged me to implement these ideas. This whole lifestyle and the passion for the cause shape you a lot and do not disappear; they will remain a part of me until the end.

So she founded the company and implemented my ideas. I was the creative mind behind it all.

Now a name was needed. By chance, I came across the term Skogamor. It refers to the time I described above. Skogamor comes from Nordic and translates to “Outlaw,” which fit very well with the circumstances, and the company SKOGAMOR TACTICAL SOLUTIONS was born. I leave further interpretations to the reader.

SPARTANAT: User-oriented question: Who should use your tools?

SKOGAMOR: Our tools are exclusively reserved for authorities and can only be purchased by them. Additionally, we also offer what is called distraction technology, which is not publicly available and the catalog is only sent upon request from authorities. The background is that we do not want to publish the advantage that this special equipment has. Because the police counterpart is also reading along.

SKOGAMOR TACTICAL SOLUTIONS online