I’m currently having problems coming up with a convincing metal finish in blender. Can someone tell me the best setting to using to get a good metal finish?
Sammo54,
I think you’ll need to be a bit more specific. Brass, gold, silver pewter, steel brushed aluminum, corosion etc…
Best of Luck!
Most metal finishes will have high specularity and maybe some reflection. If you want more detail you should give a little more detail.
I have noticed that Minnaert diffusion shader works nicely with metals. Use high Darkness value to get the wanted effect.
In some cases you may want to use “Ray Mirror”.
Also consider using a scratch spec map to add realism. Or just use suitable procedural texture.
If you are after corroded metal, you may find procedural textures useful in this especially when using stenciling.
You can find ready metal materials by searching a bit. 
Well, it really depends on what you want to achieve. You need to apply different techniques for different metals like blurred reflections to basically anything (besides chrome), not-that-easy-to-make anisotropic shaders for brushed metals, adding rust and corrosion to rusted metal…or simply enable RayMirror at a very high value for chrome (and maybe adding something for the material to reflect).
I personally always found it hard to get convincing metal materials…
Ok, sorry for lack of detail. Im trying for a shinny stainless steel like texture. Also something that can be used on fantasy style swords
Blender has a lot of cool new material features many of which deal with metal materials. Look here:
http://blender.org/cms/Material_Features.764.0.html#
although they aren’t specifically metal related the stress maps are particulary intresting.
the blender material library and car material library might be helpful:
http://mpan3.homeip.net/sub.php?mid=resources&fid=98Blenderfiles.txt