Created in cycles with 1200 samples.
open to any criticism…
I think it would make a lot more sense if you added a crossgaurd so that your hand gets sliced off when you rotate your hand too far :eyebrowlift:
But seriously…
Good composition and detail on the metal.
But because energy doesn’t have meaningful mass, all a light-saber’s weight is in its base. Therefore it doesn’t make any sense to have the handle part at the top of base. (I am assuming that the wooden parts are for hands.) So maybe place them in the middle instead?
Also, you really wouldn’t want your hands to be so close together because you get more leverage/power the further apart they are.
Xd I feel ya. I really don’t think that’s supposed to be wood looks like bronze or something like that 
I don’t think you can criticize the lightsaber design too much considering this is the same design as Luke’s second lightsaber and Obi Wan’s second. So you might just have to take that up with George Lucas.
I think no one’s mentioned yet that most lightsaber blades have a kind of ‘glow’ around the blade, providing a soft-edged look. You could do this using Filmic Blender and the Fog Glow effect 
Good design on the hilt, but I would move the control box toward the middle of the lightsaber. Most lightsabers are held in one of 3 ways: Hand near the pommel, Hand near the emitter, or one hand in each position. Luke, for example, holds his lightsaber near the pommel.
The lightsaber model is excellent. I like the wood texture (is it procedural?) but one thing that gets to me is the groung. The texture resolutions are way too low. and the front of the lightsaber is in the ground.
apart from that looks nice.
My WIP:https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?407907-Practicing-photorealism
Really nice except for one thing. With “real” lightsabers from the movies like Star Wars, the lightsabers are pure energy, so the middle is white and the outsides are then what gives the color. As seen in the picture taken from wikipedia, the inside is white while it is the outside “rim” is blue. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Lightsaber%2C_silver_hilt%2C_blue_blade.png/220px-Lightsaber%2C_silver_hilt%2C_blue_blade.png
So here I am chiming in on a lightsaber thread of all things.
I’d point out that the “white” many folks are seeing in fire or even… cough lightsabers, is actually a byproduct of the virtual camera. That is, we know that fire and lightsabers have a huge amount of energy emitting from the source. When we try to photograph them, if we are trying to hold another exposure value in the scene, it can be hard to hold the exposure of the core of the emission. This is very similar to photographing a light bulb or other hot source in the scene.
When we run out of exposure room, and assuming the film stock or DSLR has crosstalk, the result is in fact a blown out “white” in the display referred output.
However, in the actual scene, it is nothing more than a very intensely emissive particular colour. This is why it is actually a hack to make your fires or lightsabers coloured white at the core; they aren’t. You want the colour to emit all around the lightsaber, but look photographic by blowing out at the core emission.
Here is an example using Tynaud’s neon demo. Note how the central emissive core blooms out to display referred white, yet casts the saturated colour of the bulb.
First and foremost as a big Star Wars fan I am getting somewhat confused here. Are you trying to recreate Luke’s Lightsaber or is it just some kind of inspiration? For a recreation I think you would have to be far more accurate on the model and the metal there’s too much gloss on the metal part compared to the reference.
If you’re just inspired by the original: The metal looks really good, only the wear could be a little less uniform. Is that really supposed to be wood? If yes: really interesting idea and the material is okay. If t should be something like the original (brass) I’d try something more like your metal with a tint and adjusted roughness.
Also you should really consider troy_s’ advice, that’s a mistake I see a lot on lightsaber renders.