And it's not a playground, at least not one open to the public.

That large and expensive structure rising from farmland just north of Hilbert is classified on a village building permit simply as a storage building.

But it's not just your typical storage building.

The building, valued at $850,000, will house a collection of antique tractors, mostly those of retired bridge builder Paul Gehl of Hilbert.

"It will be a storage building for myself and my friends," said Gehl, former president of Lunda Constuction Co.

The upper portion of the building, its gambrel roof resembling that of a barn, will be a loft and play area for his grandchildren, he said.

"It will not be open to the public," Gehl said.

The building is also not a typical pole building found in rural areas, but a timber frame building with beams weighing as much as a good-sized polar bear, bound together by pegs, also known as pins, partly hand hewn from oak.

"There will be about 1,500 oak pins in this building. The structural part of the building is held together by mortise and tenon joinery. It is actually a superior way to fasten timbers together," said Paul Swan of Swan Timber Frames of Wisconsin Rapids. "We spend a lot of rainy days cutting the tips on those pins."

The building, of post and beam design, is made primarily from logs harvested in central Wisconsin.

"We have our own sawmill and cut our own wood," Swan said.

Some of the posts measure 12 inches by 12 inches square and are connected to the beams by pins up to 18 inches long.

The huge timbers are cut after the logs air dry for two to three years, Swan said.

He said 85 percent of posts and beams for the Hilbert project were cut by his wife, Kari.

Kari also shows the men on her husband's work crew how to correctly use steel chisels as long as her forearm.

"We do a lot of chiseling. It's a must for timber framing. And my wife is really good with chisels," Swan said.

Not all the beams come from Wisconsin.

Some of the eight-inch by 16-inch floor joists are up to 34 feet long and weigh 1,000 pounds, Swan said.

"Those are Douglas fir and we have to get those from the west coast," he said.
Construction managers on the project are Frontier Builders and Consultants of Kaukauna.

Frontier designed the building with help from Gehl and Swan, said Frontier spokesman Jeff Stodola.

Stodola said it will take a total of six months to build the Hilbert storage building, or about twice the time it takes to build a conventional building.

"But when you are looking for authenticity and old world construction timber framing is the way to go," Stodola said.

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