This is an edition of the newsletter Box + Papers, Cam Wolf’s weekly deep dive into the world of watches. Sign up here.
Provenance is massive in the watch world: Astronaut-worn Omega Speedmasters, Paul Newman’s Rolex Daytona, and John Lennon’s missing Patek Philippe are just some of the pieces that fascinate collectors. The latest yarn spinning through the industry involves a Rolex Air-King that a cow allegedly ate 50 years ago and was lost and buried in a field until it was found a few months ago.
James Steele, a British dairy farmer, told the BBC that he was working in his pasture one day in the early 1970s when he realized the watch was no longer on his wrist. The Rolex only turned up because, as James’s son Andrew told watch blog Horolonomics, the family hired a metal detectorist The last we heard of the 1950s Air-King, it was destined to remain in its rusted-up dysfunctional condition because restoration would “cost a bomb,” as James put it .
Enter Kalle Slaap. Slaap is a watch restorer based in the Netherlands who runs the popular YouTube page Chronoglide. When he heard the story of the watch, he reached out to the Steele family to offer up his services for free. “It's like a tale of hope in these crazy times,” Slaap said over a Zoom call this week, “that even a Rolex, which is a quality product, can be restored without having to be thrown away, and can be given to the next generation.” Emotions aside, he also couldn’t resist the opportunity to see the effects of 50 years spend underground in a field—and a potential journey through a cow’s four-chambered intestinal tract. Slaap only just received the watch earlier this week and is planning on restoring it over the rest of the year. I chatted with him about his new project.
GQ: So you heard the story and reached out to the family to offer to do it for free. Why?
Slaap: For us, it's like a science experiment. How often do you get a watch that is so abused by the elements? For us, if we can restore this, we can restore everything, and we're quite convinced that we can. And it’s such a lovely story. The guy is 95 years old, and how cool will it be that he will be able to wear the present he bought for his 21st birthday again?
Is this the worst condition you’ve ever worked with?
Yeah, it is the watch worst affected by corrosion. But then again, it is a mass-produced watch. So we're going to do what we do with about every restoration to keep it affordable, which is we find a donor movement from the exact same age—everything original. Only the carbon steel parts have rust. All the parts from brass or nickel plated don't rust, so those we can salvage.
Everything stays, not only original but authentic as well. It is still the movement, but only the carbon steel parts we have to replace.
Which parts are carbon steel?
The pivots of the gear train, screws, some springs. That's just about it. Everything that is identifiable as his movements will all stay original to his particular watch. That is the bar we set, and that is what we like to show the world is possible.
You're very generously doing this for free, but what would this cost if someone brought this watch in and asked you to restore it?
Yeah, well, because of all the parts we need, it is about $5,000, I think. But usual restoration, if the watch or the movement can be restored with the original parts? It's way, way lower than that.
I like the idea that you’re approaching this as a science project. What have you learned so far?
There was unfortunately damage from the plowing in the fields that snapped off the crown and the tube and the remaining bracelet, otherwise it would be a completely different story [the loss of the crown allowed moisture and dirt to enter the watch]. I'm convinced that if the rubber seals were still pretty okay, the inside of the watch would have been completely different than what it is now.
Tomorrow, I will probably lift the dial and then we will start putting parts in a rust dissolver that we mix ourselves.
That's crazy. So even the dial will be the original?
Definitely, and we had contact with the Steele family and what their wishes are. Because if we restore it brand spanking new, then the look and feel and authenticity will be gone. The rust on the dial is part of the story of the watch. So we are going to polish the case back to new, but the dial we will leave it rusted and as is because that is this part of the story that makes it so unique.
It is possible to do a repaint, but that just looks horrible. So we will leave them those marks on the dial.
The story is that a cow allegedly ate this. Is there anything on the watch you can trace back to that? Like, “Oh, this seems like stomach acid caused this.”
Well, we did our homework. My next-door neighbor is the leading biologist here in the Netherlands, and we were walking the dogs together and discussed it. The stomach content of a cow is only around a pH six [a human stomach is around 1.5 to 3.5 pH]. My father-in-law is a farmer and said there is no way a cow can swallow a watch. But then I showed him it's only 34 millimeters, and probably without the bracelet. And then he said, “Ah, plausible.” Mr. Steele lost the watch during the feeding of the cows, and it was found in a completely different field where the cows go, but he doesn't walk around there.
How much did the family tell you about the watch’s history?
He bought it for his 21st birthday in 1950—it was just after the World Second World War. After the war, a lot of American GIs and people in industry were in the UK and all the Americans were wearing Rolex watches. So [Steele] vowed for himself, whenever I grow up, I am going to buy a Rolex. So he bought it for life with his savings and the money he got from friends and family. It was a prized possession he wore every single day. So he lost it while feeding the cows. He paid quite a bit of money for it: 100 pounds, which, I think, is equivalent to $4000 now.
And we were fortunate enough that his granddaughter knew us from our YouTube channel. So she felt safe with us doing the restoration because she already knew our approach.
I hear from people who aren't even really into watches that they enjoy watching the restoration. It’s relaxing.
Somebody called me the Bob Ross of watchmaking, just without the curly hair.
\I saw on your livestream when you first opened this up, and you said you are hoping to have the watch back to the family before Christmas. What are the next steps in this process?
We will do the disassembly, but that is difficult because of the rust. Tomorrow we will try to get everything out of the case. That shouldn't be that difficult because the retaining screws are completely gone, so with just a bit of wiggling we should get it out of the case without leaving any marks on the dial. Then the next huge challenge is removing the dial, because the screws that are holding the dial are rusted, so we must be very careful. And once we remove the dial we will have to completely remove the rust from the movement. And then gently, gently, gently, probably with machines, we have to drill out the rusted screws so the holes aren't deformed. So when the screws are drilled out we can clean the parts. We are already sourcing the parts for the gear train, the springs, and the screws. And then it will be cleaned and assembled. To be honest, that is what we're doing every single day here, so that shouldn't be too much of a hassle.
Where do you source the parts from?
Well, obviously, Rolex isn't sharing. So we source some parts via eBay. We have our own huge collection of vintage watch parts, so we help out watchmakers here in mainland Europe, and they help me if I don’t have some stuff.
What do you foresee being the biggest challenge with this particular watch?
Retaining its original parts. So cleaning all the crusty stuff off, especially identifiable parts with serial numbers or small marks that make it this watch—they have to be retained to be reused. It is way too easy just to replace the movement and say that's it.
As a watch restorer, where do you land on the debate between polishing or not? Some people see it as removing the marks that make a watch special and personal while others want it to look brand new.
Polishing is the fastest way to diminish the value of a watch. If it's done wrong, everything becomes round and looks cheap. But polishing is also the fastest way to increase the value if it's done right. So if all the edges are perfectly sharp. That is the real challenge in polishing.
What do you think it says about Rolex and the quality of these watches that it can be eaten by a cow and sit in a field for 50 years and with some months of restoration it'll be able to function again? I think that that's kind of amazing.
It is, but…There’s always a but with watchmaking. Rolex’s quality is so high because they are so simple. Rolex holds patents for the simplest solution to every problem. That is The Rolex Way. A Rolex is so simple we call it a tractor here in the workshop because it's so durable and reliable. That's why James Bond wore a Rolex: because you can do anything with it. And especially in the 50s, it wasn't a luxury brand, it was just a reliable watch. So that simple quality means that we can restore it always.
It's going to be special to see this thing ticking again.
Yes, there are so many strange angles to the story. It is Mr. Steele, who is 95 and just a charming man. It is a Rolex that took huge abuse. We want to bring it to the family so he can hand it to the next generation. It's got nothing to do with telling the time a watch. It is so much more than that. You can live your life and your adventures with your watch on your wrist. That makes it so personal.
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