Video: Dutch watchmaker restores Rolex 50 years after it was eaten by a cow
Dutch watchmaker Kalle Slaap recently had the opportunity to answer a unique question: Can a Rolex be fixed after being eaten by a cow and then lying in a meadow for 50 years? It turns out it can. Some 160 hours of work later, Slaap was able to return a working watch to its now 94-year-old owner, English farmer James Steele, who lost the watch in 1974, RTL Nieuws reports.
Steele lost the watch in the meadow near his farm in Shropshire in 1974 and gave it up as lost after endless searching. It now appears that a cow ate the fallen watch and then passed it again. Fifty years later, in June of this year, someone with a metal detector came across it in the meadow and returned it to Steele.
The watch no longer ran and had suffered considerable damage in the past five decades. Steele was ready to give up on the watch, which had a great deal of sentimental value to him, when his granddaughter came across the YouTube channel of Dutch watchmaker Kalle Slaap from Grootschermer in Noord-Holland.
Slaap took on the job in July. “It was a challenge for us. I had never seen anything like it. You don’t often see so much rust in a watch. It became a kind of scientific experiment: which parts can you still save after so many years?” Slaap told RTL Nieuws. After 160 hours of work with four men, Slaap and his team got the Rolex working and looking almost like new. “We only had to replace 20 percent of all the parts. The rest was still completely intact after cleaning.”
When starting the job, Slaap and his team hoped to return the watch to Steele by around Christmas. “But because of the farmer’s age, we put a bit more haste behind it,” he told the broadcaster. They returned the watch on Sunday. “He was emotional and delighted,” Slaap said. “Mr. Steele had the day of his life.”
According to Slaap, the discovery of the watch after all this time has given Steele a bit of a new lease on life. “Before the discovery, he had broken his hip and was becoming less and less able. His children saw him slowly fade away. But the attention from the press made him more popular in the village where he lives. It really cheered him up.”
Steele told his local newspaper that he was “over the moon” about having his watch back. “People have been asking me if I’ve been excited about it, but I’d gone past excitement,” Steele said. “It’s a real boost to me - it’s given a new lease of life, it really has. I have such a smile on my face, and now everyone is telling me that I don’t look my age. I’m going to go to 100 now.”
