Well, I decided to try to model something myself today, please excuse the extreme simplicity. I made the chain by dupliframing a modified NURBS donut along a path, making the objects real, then dupliframing again with the chain link rotated 90 degrees (I had to play with the dup off setting a lot to get the links in the right place.). Is there an easier way to do this? And where can I download a material & textures library?
Suggestions?
http://www.blender.org/cms/Resources.181.0.html got links to materials there.
You can make each link rotate by adding a rot key to the link and in the ipo window making it rotate 90 degrees when it should.
I know what an IPO curve is and how to use them, but what’s a rot key?
Rotational key. Press the ‘I’-key when you have the link selected and choose rot
It’s not much, but I worked on the handle a little and added a marble texture to make it look like a sculpture. Comments, suggestions…
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You can make each link rotate by adding a rot key to the link and in the ipo window making it rotate 90 degrees when it should.
I’m having some trouble doing this, do you mean a rotation constraint? What should I do specifically? Sorry, I’m extremely new to Blender.
Found it!!! I’ve been looking for this since I saw your post. Check it out
http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/ch22s03.html
Oh and a chain of marble isn’t very likely. Do some proper materials. A wooden handle and some metal for the rest.
Thanks for the tut! 
About the texture, I finally decided on marble partly because I couldn’t get anything else from the library to look good, and I’m not very good at making my own textures. 
I’ll try again though.
Do that. I HATE texturing stuff. No fun at all. But it’s just trial and error. Good luck
Good, only the chain doesen’t look stretched to me;)
The main thing you should do isn’t the texture at this point. You could make this look pretty good even if the material was plain white if you get some better lighting and shadows on your render. Add three ray spotlights two from the front left and right with energy on the front ones about .5 each and one from back left or right with .7, turn on ambient occlusion in the world panel and render with ray tracing enables and wa-la your model will look 10x better.
Texturing can be quite irritating but it is a very good skill to have under you belt. I can send a very good wood texture if you want.
Blazer, I’ll try to figure out how to do what you said and try it!
Petersk, that’s probably because of my chain making method, hopefully the tut Litterate linked to will help me with that in the future.
Jackj, that would be great. Here’s my latest pathetic attempt.
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It’s ceder I think: http://img364.imageshack.us/img364/7775/cedar1aj.jpg
(Warning: Image is 2048X2048, very large)
Wow, a couple weeks pass and I can already get this render about 1,000% better than it was. More C&C please! 
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Great! Although a modern library probably isn’t your best alternative for a 15th Century weapon. Great though!
It looks pretty good, LotRJ. You might want to check out thesereferance pics.
Also try adding a cloud texture under the wood texture, and turning on ‘Nor’. Then set the color to a darker, dirtier brown. If you don’t want the new darker color to overpower the wood texture, you can adjust the ‘Color’ slider under Material buttons/‘Map to’ tab, to define how much of the new cloud color is mapped onto the final material.
I have figured out how to make a chain work in real time, so your mace could really be dangling from the handle. Yet another tutorial I’m going to write in the next stretch of vacation.
Jackj, my only problem is I couldn’t find a free .hdr probe with a medieval theme. I figured the one I used might have kind of a museum feel, that way it doesn’t look too out of place. Plus, if you really want to get picky, I doubt people in the middle ages could get such a nice, smooth, metallic sheen. If anyone can find a free medieval looking probe, I’ll use it and make the metal rougher with a cloud texture nor map.
Thanks for the suggestions ben, I’ll try it. As far as the reference pic link, I got 404’d! 
Looking forward to that tut! 
[Edit] Do you think this would be a better probe choice? The one I’m using right now is the bottom one.
Looking a lot better LOTRJ
How do you get reflections like that when there is nothing to reflect?
Only real crit is that maybe a darker texture would be better for the handle.