Knowledge base
Discovera Academy
Guides, restoration, history and legal — everything about metal detecting.
🧭 Guides
Choosing a Detector in 2025
A guide to picking your first metal detector: from budget to pro.
5. Cleaning and Care
How not to ruin a find. Mechanical methods, chemistry, and electrolysis.
3. Equipment
Choosing a detector, coil, frequency, and settings.
9. Ethics and Mindset
The code of honor, motivation, and how to handle an unlucky outing.
8. Hoards and Collections
Types of hoards, the psychology of the person who buried them, and valuation.
6. Identification
How to figure out what you found: coins, metals, and dating.
1. Introduction to Detecting
The basics of the hobby, the history of treasure hunting, and how to use this guide.
2. Laws and Legal Issues
Where you can dig, your legal liability, and the rules for reporting finds.
4. Tactics and Locations
Forest, field, beach. Where to search and how to walk your patterns.
7. Specialized Searching
Meteorites, underwater detecting, and deep targets.
Choosing a Metal Detector
Budget, terrain type, frequencies, and the top detectors to consider.
Introduction to Metal Detecting
Where to start: the philosophy of the hobby, safety basics, and your first steps with a metal detector.
Search Tactics
Forest, field, beach. Where to search and how to walk your patterns.
Safety and Ethics
The code of honor, UXO hazards, and rules of conduct.
Settings: First Steps
Sensitivity, ground balance, discrimination, and a quick test before heading out.
🔧 Restoration
Checklist & Common Mistakes
The 7 deadly sins of restoration and a quick-reference reagent guide.
Chemistry & Tools
The restorer's toolkit: from soap to thiourea.
Copper & Bronze
Fighting bronze disease while preserving a noble patina.
Iron & Cast Iron
Electrolysis, annealing, and mechanical methods for ferrous metal.
Preservation
How to protect your find for centuries after cleaning.
Principles & Fundamentals
The golden rules: when to clean a find, and when to leave it alone.
Cleaning Silver
How to remove blackening without killing the mint luster.
Nickel, Bimetal & Special Cases
Soviet kopecks, cast items, and jewelry.
📜 History
Coins of the Empire
How to read imperial monograms, identify mint marks and denominations.
Types of Hoards
Savings hoards, emergency caches, and foundation deposit coins explained.
Identifying Your Finds
Crosses, buttons, horse tack - how to tell junk from a real artifact.
Reading Old Maps
Shubert, Mende, and Red Army map symbols - what to look for.