Building Viking shields is not the thing most teens spend their time on, but for one Aurora high school student the work was a perfect fit. For his Eagle Scout project, West Aurora High School senior ...

VISTAVISTA — Some carpentry buffs spend their retirement years building birdhouses, furniture or jewelry boxes. Tom Kottmeier had bigger plans. The 76-year-old San Marcos resident has spent much of ...

SAN DIEGO — Some carpentry buffs spend their retirement years building birdhouses, furniture or jewelry boxes. Tom Kottmeier had bigger plans. The 76-year-old San Marcos resident has spent much of the ...

For the past couple of years in the town of Branford, two shipwrights have been building a full-scale reproduction of a Viking Age fishing vessel. The 12th century replica recently launched from Stony ...

For decades, Thomas Kottmeier has been driven by one obsession: to build a wooden replica Viking ship. He thought about it, studied, practiced, talked about it with his family at dinners, and found ...