i’m trying to make a barrel at the moment, and my modeling is almost done, but i have a problem. i don’t know what i was thinking, but i applied a subsurf modifier and saved it (woops) and now it’s annoyingly high- poly, making it hard to work with in places. if you click the image up above, you’ll see that the metal frame around the top isn’t very well rounded, and it’s sort of flat on the side. this would be an easy fix, except that when i subsurfed it, the mesh around plug on the top became horribly messy. what’s the easiest, most convenient way to get it into a perfect circle, and then possibly add slats on the inside to show the tops of the planks? (like so: 
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Any advice would be very helpful. thanks in advance!
new problem. i just got the inside of the barrel all fixed up and happy by using proportional editing with the right type of falloff: http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj34/yodelingtortellini/barrelscrnshot-1.jpg
and now, as you can see, the outside of the top rung is just a little wonky. once again, advice would be helpful.
the easiest, most convenient way to get it into a perfect circle
Assuming your barrel is aligned along the Z axis, select all verts on one Z level; subdivide them (W, 1) once to get the missing verts; and in the Mesh Tools select To Sphere>100%. This should align all the selected verts into a perfect circle.
To get sharp edges using subsurf: Simply add more edges using Ctrl+R and drag the new edges towards the edge you want to sharpen.
Hope it helped
/ Mats
EDIT: To use To Sphere you might need to align the 3D cursor (Shift+S>Cursor->Selection).
aha, that worked well! and that’s the trick to the sphere tool, the cursor position. thanks, the rungs look much flatter and more metallic now. ty.
here it is now, with much straighter rings: http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj34/yodelingtortellini/barrel2.jpg
