:D…well…worked on this for a few hours…got some interesting results…but i was hoping if one of you could help me with something…
I would make a seam along it’s length that will divide it into two almost identical UV maps.
Once you have the seams just unwrap it.
its a good idea (havent tried that yet -.-) but still…how can i add the words to one spot on the blade…without ruining the material…and by the way…do you know of any texture tutorial that could help me? like…something to help make shiny metal as a texture…then id add the scratches 
and…i tried to put one seam all around…but it gives me weird results…T_T
and when i try to unwrap it it tells me- object scale is not 1.0. Unwrap will operate on a non scaled version of the mesh.
any ideas?
What you need are normal and spec maps.
For the shiny metal, you’re gonna want a bright specular to make it look…well…shiny. What I’d do is do a render cloud pass in Photoshop (or GIMP, if you prefer) with a low amount of contrast, Just enough so that the head isn’t uniformly shiny all the way across. You’ll have some slightly darker bits to break up the surface. Run a gaussian blur filter over it, just enough so it doesn’t look lumpy anymore, and you should have a decent enough base for your spec. If you want to go that extra mile, you can paint a slightly brighter grey along the edges to add some highlights in. Then, when you go in for the scratches on the diffuse, make sure to do them on their own separate layer. That way, you can desaturate it, adjust the brightness accordingly, then lay it over your spec map so they don’t show up quite as bright as the underlying metal. Play around with it a bit, and you should eventually have a shiny scratchy metal ax head.
And the words. I’m going to guess you’ll want them cut into the metal. To do that, take the UV, apply a white background to the ax head bits, then use your text tool in PS (or GIMP, if you prefer), choose your font, and make it a light grey color. If you want the letters to cut deeper in, then use a darker grey. Type out your words wherever they need to go, adjust to taste, and rasterize the layer. Apply a slight blur to it so you don’t have super, super rough edges. Don’t go too far here. Apply just enough to round it out a tiny bit along the stark edges. Otherwise it’ll look mushy. Collapse your layers together and run it through your favorite normalmapper (if you’re using PS, the nVidia filter will do fine here for something this simple), and apply it to your UVed material. There you go. You’ve got words on your ax! 
now…for the first part…i kinda understood o.o (i suck at gimp…kinda need to learn more) but i did a could render from the filter bar thing(then i put the contrast down)…then i ran a gaussian blur, after that i took the opacity down on the black paint and made it brighter around the edges…but for the scratches…i dont really understand…if i do something on another layer…you dont see it on the cloud render layer…o.o…please explain in detail oh wise one
and…i tried to put one seam all around…but it gives me weird results…T_T
and when i try to unwrap it it tells me- object scale is not 1.0. Unwrap will operate on a non scaled version of the mesh.
any ideas?
In object-mode select the sword, hit CTRL-a and apply the scale 
Problem is, I suck at GIMP too. I’ve used it all of…about…like…3 times in my life.
But on the plus side, Photoshop is similar enough that you should be able to copy what I do with roughly 99% accuracy. So I’ll show you what I mean below, complete with pretty pictures.
This is Blahmetal. I call it Blahmetal because I put in the absolute minimal amount of effort into this texture to get my point across (I think I spent roughly 50 seconds doing it). 
Blahmetal Diffuse
Blahmetal Spec
Both of these were made about the same way. Two layers, one the base color, the other the scratches I painted in on top, just using a whitish color, and dabbing at it until it looked scratchy enough. I then copied the diffuse scratches over, and inverted the colors so they’re darker (don’t want them shining brighter than your base metal on your spec). My layer order looked like this…
That’s really all their is to it. I’m sure GIMP works the same way here. Any new layer will be completely transparent by default. As long as you’re painting something that doesn’t blend into the layer below, it should show right up.
Hopefully I made myself a quarter of the way clear here. If you’re still confused, just say so, and I’ll try to explain it even moreso.
so…i rendered a cloud pass…then on a separate layer i added scratches…and did the blur and stuff like that…and it kinda resembles yours…just worse 
but for your diffuse…did you keep the clouds and make them darker? or did you just paint the layer gray? …and it also looks like it has other darker scratches. and by the way…i do have photoshop cs5…but its cracked :o
so if you prefer explaining more in photoshop…then you can…but i know less than nothing when it comes to photoshop 
I wouldn’t say worse, rather more like painted, slightly rusted metal. It’s a good first attempt, but it wouldn’t work for something like an ax head.
What I did was pull out one of those cheesy 5 second Photoshop tricks you could probably pick up on those LEARN PHOTOSHOP IN FIVE EASY STEPS pages for the base metal texture. All you do is fill one layer with a mid-to-light grey color, make another layer and fill it with a slightly darker grey, then on this new layer, run a filter/noise/add noise filter, check monochromatic, uniform, and give it a low percentage, like, say 15% or so. Now you’ve got a bunch of random dots. Next, run a blur/motion blur filter, set it so it’s blurring left to right, and adjust to about 66 pixels. You’ll probably have some weird stretching along the edge. Fix that by hitting ctrl+t to activate free transform, and drag those edges off the canvas until you don’t see them anymore. Now, play with the opacity a bit (it’s on the layers box, next to the filters dropdown menu), until you’ve got just enough streaks in it without being too overbearing. You don’t want straight up brushed metal, you just want to add some streaky metalish noise. Something to add a little more variety to your texture besides a flat, boring grey.
Then make another layer, pick a grey-to-whitish color, and start scratching away.
now…one more thing…that solves it for the blade…what about the rest? 
Well…I’d suggest learning how to bake an ambient occlusion map. It’s usually the first thing I do when I start working on a new texture.
It takes all of 3 clicks to make one, but first…do you have everything UVed yet?
yes…i have the whole thing unwrapped… :D…its the most complex unwrapping ive ever made…o.o, i usually stick to materials and such… i would’ve for this one too… but i thought of it as the perfect occasion to practice textures
Alright then! It’s about time you got introduced to the wild wooly world of making textures in proper then. Here’s what you do to make an ambient occlusion map for your UV. Click on the Render button on the right toolbar, and go all the way down to the Bake header. Under the Bake Mode dropdown menu, select (appropriately) Ambient Occlusion. Select your model in edit mode, check the normalize checkbox, set the margin to 2 (so it’ll cover any seams you’ll get from your UV islands), open up your UV window, then hit bake. Wait about 40 seconds or so (maybe a little longer, depending on how fast your comp is), and you’ll get this white, shaded looking…stuff type thing. Congratulations! You just made your first AO bake! Hit the image menu at the bottom, and select “save as image”. Make it a lossless image, like a TGA or PNG file.
I whipped up a quick example of the staff section on your ax to show you what it’ll look like applied to the model by itself…
Pretty neat. But by itself, it isn’t going to do you much good for making a realistic looking model. We’ll have to go into Photoshop for that.
Okay. I’m assuming you’re in Photoshop, and you’ve opened up your new AO image by this point. Here’s what you do. Doubleclick on any blank space on your background layer tab, and you should get a little “new layer” dialog box". Hit okay, and it should rename it as 'Layer 0". Next, go to your filters dropdown menu, and select “multiply”. Your layers box should look something like this…
You’ve now primed your AO map to be applied to any texture you put underneath it. Since I don’t want to go real, real, real indepth with this, I’ll just grab a generic fine wood texture off CGTextures and slap it underneath to show you what it does. It’ll look like this…
You’ve now got an AO’ed up generic smooth wood texture. If you think the shadows are too dark, you can play with the brightness and contrast a bit. Next, save the whole thing out as a TGA file, and apply it to your ax. There you go…woody ax handle!
You can use AO maps for grunge, shadowing, highlights, anything. Experiment with them, they’re versatile things. At the very least, they make for a great guide to design your UV around while in Photoshop.
Not the best in the world, but still not bad for 5 minutes worth of work.
